"Heave to, till dawn comes!" was now the Captain's order, and the ship was accordingly hove to, about two miles to leeward of the reef, and a keen look-out was kept in every direction for breakers.
On sounding the well, Joe Grummet reported that the ship had sprung a leak, and the water was rising at the rate of two feet an hour; so the chain pumps were rigged, and all idlers—such as the carpenter, cook, steward, and others—took the first spell thereat, to be immediately followed by a fresh gang, so that the leak made little way.
The gale abated as day came in with its tropical rapidity and splendour, and Captain Talbot knew instantly that the reef they had so nearly perished on, was one of those between the numerous rocky and barren little islets that stud the whole coast around the island of Fernando-de-Noronha, which lies about seventy leagues north-east from the Cabo de San Roque, on the coast of Brazil.
In the full glory of the morning sun, towered up the Campanario (or Belfry), a steep mountain of the isle, a thousand feet in height, and of a form so remarkable, that on one side the upper portion overhangs its base. The Portuguese flag was hoisted on Fort Remedios, as the Amethyst passed on the north-west side of the island, with a soft and pleasant breeze, while the hands were aloft, bending a new set of topsails, or attending to the leak and other damages of the eventful night.
While sent aloft, for practice, to assist in bending on the new foretopsail, Derval had not much time either for reflection on the catastrophe of the past sleepless night, or observing the wonderful multitude of turtle's eggs which cover all the rocks and shore thereabout between the months of December and April; but when excitement and work were over, he, like others, had leisure to think over poor Tom Titford, whose maritime career, to which he had looked forward in all the delight of youth, was thus ended ere it had well begun.
His empty berth and vacant place at table, his uniform cap hanging on a peg, and his little trunk with all his worldly goods remained; but his soft smiling face and his earnest honest eyes were gone from human gaze for ever, and Derval and Hal Bowline were very sad on the subject of his sudden loss, which made them somehow closer friends, while each felt that the victim might have been himself or the other; and both instinctively clenched their fists when they heard Bitts say, with a silent laugh, that "even if the body were found, there would be no coroner's inquest in the latitude of Pedro-de-Noronha, and that young lubbers when they went aloft should remember the maxim of 'one hand for myself, and one for my owners.'"
So the middy, of whose death the passing ship brought tidings, was not Derval Hampton, but little Tom Titford. Had it been himself, he thought, who would have sorrowed for him? and it cannot seem strange that the image of old Patty Fripp occurred to the lonely lad even before that of his own father.
For days after the storm, he felt his legs and arms stiff from the effect of bruises and abrasions sustained in clasping the shrouds when going aloft to reef the topsails.
Days of light breezes and bright weather followed each other now, and on a fine morning in March the cheerful cry of "Land in sight," passed from mouth to mouth on board the Amethyst. To Derval's eye, the faint blue mass that rose west-north-west about four miles distant, seemed an island; but to Talbot and many of the crew it was familiar as Cape Frio, a promontory on the Brazilian coast, sixty-four miles eastward of their destination; and with all that interest and curiosity excited by the appearance of a new and strange country, he watched the oval-shaped mass of granite cliff that terminates a long range of mountains, and all its features were distinct by five in the evening, when it was only seven miles distant.
With midnight came squally weather, with thunder and red flashes of lightning, against which, "instant seen and instant lost," rose the black outline of the heavy waves, serrated like the teeth of a saw; but when day came in, the Amethyst was standing in for the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, under full sail, with a steady breeze from the sea. Long ere this, the watch on deck had been busy getting the cables out of the tier, laying them in French-fake on the deck, a peculiar method adopted to let them run out freely, precluding all danger of the links getting foul. They were then bent to the anchors, which were hoisted over the bows and hung by the ring ready for use.