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CHAPTER IV.
UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS.
The voyage of the Amethyst towards tropical seas and shores was far from monotonous, and more than one startling event occurred during its progress. With her snowy canvas spread, her rigging all a-taut (to use a cant nautical phrase), and her deck, whilom so wet, slippery, and foul in dock, well holystoned and swabbed till it was—as Joe Grummet said—white as a lady's hand, the Amethyst was in all her beauty now—all the more so to Derval, who got rid of his sea-sickness ere she cleared the Channel.
"Well, my little man," said Captain Talbot one day, when Joe Grummet was teaching him the use of the quadrant, "how do you feel on your sea legs—eh?"
"Happy, sir—very happy," replied Derval, turning his bright young face, which was flushed by the keen breeze, laden by the iodine of many thousand miles of the fresh, glorious, and open ocean.
"That's right, my lad."
"I have not been so happy for many a year past," said Derval, thinking, perhaps, of his mother.
"Come, come, youngster, it is rather early in life for you to talk of many years, and of happiness in the past tense," said the Captain, amused by a quaintness in the manner of Derval—a manner born of the kind of isolation in which he had lived in his father's house; and save for the annoyance occasionally given to him by the wasp-like nature of Paul Bitts, he would have had nothing to complain of, for the good example and gentlemanly bearing of Captain Talbot and the first and second mates, affected all the ship's company advantageously.
As for the self-won ducking in the West India Dock, Derval hoped Mr. Bitts would forget that and get over it in time; but he never did, and in many ways pursued the feud which he had declared, apparently, on the day Derval first joined the ship.