What other arrangement could he make, but rejoin his ship? and that, as yet, was impossible.
The homeward voyage was a very protracted one, and for several reasons the Holyrood was long detained at the Cape by the Commodore commanding our squadron there.
It was when lying in Table Bay that Derval read in an old number of the Times, that Lord Oakhampton, his meeting with whom he had well-nigh forgotten amid more exciting events, had returned home from Bermuda. Then he thought of Clara, and wondered if the little maid, with the rosebud mouth she had given him so frankly to kiss, remembered the young sailor to whom she owed her life in the Summer Isles.
The paragraph announcing that Lord Oakhampton had resigned his governorship, concluded by stating that strange rumours were abroad, to the effect that his Lordship's return was connected with a new and unexpected claimant to his title and estates, whose pretensions thereto would soon be a knotty matter for a committee of privileges.
Derval read all this with singular indifference. So keen was his disgust of his own family, that he cared little whether his father succeeded in his claim or not. One fact he felt assured of, that it would avail him—Derval—nothing to communicate to him the cruel treachery of which his step-mother, and her kinsman, had made his eldest son their victim. She would simply deny it, and the breach made wide enough now by coldness and indifference, would become more so by solid mistrust and dislike.
Thus he resolved to go no more near his home, and hence the long ignorance of all there as to his movements, and even of his existence.
When the Amethyst returned home, and Derval stepped on board of her in the London docks, old Joe Grummet, who was smoking his pipe in the gangway, thought he saw a ghost, and uttered a roar of absolute terror! Most extravagant was the joy of the worthy old salt on being assured of Derval's identity.
"Of all my yarns, this beats them—beats old Boots!" he exclaimed, as he drew a match across the sole of his shoe and relighted his pipe.
"Where is the Captain, Joe?" asked Derval.
"Captain 's in the cabin."