Mr. De Murrer now took his hat and departed, certain that this Parthian shot was the heaviest and sharpest he had fired; and sooth to say, my Lord Oakhampton felt and knew it to be so!
His alarm, however, and infinite anxiety, rather died away when delays ensued consequent to the disappearance or alleged death of Derval, and still more by the sudden demise of Greville Hampton, who was found lifeless at his desk one afternoon, when at his usual task of calculating and speculating.
The bulk of all his fortune he left by will to Rookleigh, while Mrs. Hampton was handsomely provided for during her life. The sum of £500 per annum was set apart for Derval, in case he was ever heard of; if not within a given time, it reverted to Rookleigh.
So Greville Hampton was dead, and Rookleigh stood at the head of his grave as chief mourner; but he was not laid by Mary's side in the pretty little churchyard where for ages, yea since Saxon times, "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." No, no; Mrs. Hampton took care of that; so he was deposited in the new and pretentious mausoleum of Cornish granite, in the fashionable cemetery of "the new and rising watering-place of Finglecombe," where a special spot was reserved for herself.
In the matter of the peerage claim, Mrs. Hampton would have left nothing undone, of course, to urge Mr. De Murrer in advancing the interests of her well-beloved son Rookleigh; but just about the time of her husband's death, something occurred which led to a change in her mind, or to indifference on the subject, and this "something" proved to be tidings of—Derval!
CHAPTER III.
H.M.S. "HOLYROOD."
After being struck down by Reeve Rudderhead, in the merciless way we have described, Derval lay long insensible, and when his thoughts began to turn again to earth, he was haunted by a dream of home—of wild grass where the brindled cattle stood knee-deep, of fields studded with the white stars of the dog-daisies, the golden buttercups, and scarlet poppies, of rose-tangled hedges and meadow-sweet; then came the face and figure of Rudderhead—and starting, he staggered up on his hands and knees, weak and giddy with loss of blood, dim of sight, and his head racked with pain by the force of the blow.
What sounds were these? Cannon and musketry and yells in the air, as if the fiends of the lower world had broken loose. He remembered the savages from which the boats' crews were escaping, and with a heart filled by terrible emotions of anxiety and rage—anxiety for himself, and rage to find that he was the victim of a plot between Reeve Rudderhead and Mrs. Hampton—he crept cautiously through the brushwood among which he had been lying, and where a pool of his blood yet lay, till he reached the brow of a little eminence which overlooked the bay, and arrived in time only to see the last of the conflict between the Amethyst and the savages.
The bay was strewed with the floating ruins of many canoes, and the dead bodies of their whilom occupants; others were being paddled away in hot haste; the ship was under weigh, with her topsails sheeted home and her head-sails filled;—under weigh, and he—unable to join her, or make any sign or signal—was left behind!