Home! how mighty was the waste of waters he had to traverse ere he could see its white cliffs again.
So violent was the fury of the storm, that to see the hands aloft endeavouring to furl or secure the fragments of the topsails, was calculated to strike terror, as momentarily they seemed in danger of being whirled off into the air.
Half a mile distant a partly dismasted ship, with the flag of the Royal Naval Reserve flying reversed at her gaff-peak, could be seen rising and falling beautifully on the long waves, at one time showing all her bows and nearly all her side, anon the whole line of her deck swept of everything from stem to stern, with her drenched crew clinging to the lower rigging or belaying pins. One moment she seemed lifted as if on the summit of a green hill, and the next seemed sunk in the deep dark valley; but it soon became evident to the eyes of Captain Talbot, and of all on board the Amethyst, that the buoyancy of the stranger was gone—that she must have sprung a leak and was settling down in the water with terrible rapidity.
Even if boats could have been hoisted out, it would have been impossible to have succoured her in such a sea, and ere long, while a cry came across from her crew, to be echoed by another from that of the Amethyst, she went down by the stern and vanished from sight with every man on board of her.
"And this might have been our fate!" was the thought of Derval.
The tempest passed away to tear up other oceans, but so agitated was the water, that the Amethyst pitched and lurched heavily, while a new set of topsails were bent upon her; all damages made so far good, and with a steady breeze she began to enter the straits of Sunda. By noon next day the south-east point of the Isle of Lombock, with its great conical peak, eight thousand feet in height, bore S.S.W. on the starboard bow, and Captain Talbot steered for the strait of Allas, passed the isle to the westward and that of Sumbawa to the westward, which is reckoned the best and safest way to the eastward of Java; and at the beginning of the end of his pilgrimage, after running along the shore of Madura—the land of cotton, rice, and edible nests—Derval heard, with a sigh of satisfaction, the anchor let go in the roads of Batavia, as the ship swung at her moorings, with thirty-five fathoms and the small bower out, and the hands went aloft to furl the sails.
In his anxiety to return, to be off again as soon as possible, no man in the ship equalled Derval in his activity, with regard to getting the cargo out and another in, and daily he counted the hours while watching from the deck the lovely low green isles that stud the beautiful bay, the white-walled city, with its two-and-twenty bastions—"the Queen of the East," with all her palaces, villas, and trees, for there the Dutch, true to their national taste, have covered every available spot with verdure, flowers, and the brightest foliage.
Finally, the ballast and the last casks of sugar and turmeric were on board, the hatches battened down, and the boats hoisted in, and after a month's sojourn, in which he did not spend an idle hour, with a glow of joy he heard the orders given that were to take the ship out of the roadstead of Batavia.
"Mr. Grummet," cried the captain, "weather bit the chain forward, man the windlass, heave and haul! Mr. Hampton, get the topsails loose—I see they are furled with reefs."
"Away aloft, my lads," said Derval, "make sail on her with a will."