DERVAL HAMPTON

A Story of the Sea.

BY

JAMES GRANT,

AUTHOR OF "ROMANCE OF WAR," ETC., ETC.

VOL. II.

LONDON:
W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE,
PALL MALL, S.W.

1881.

(All rights reserved.)

LONDON:
PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.—["A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea"]

CHAPTER II.—[Turtle Island]

CHAPTER III.—[H.M.S. Holyrood]

CHAPTER IV.—[The Desire of the Moth for the Star"]

CHAPTER V.—["Deeper than e'en Plummet sounded"]

CHAPTER VI.—[A Crushed Heart]

CHAPTER VII.—[Nemesis]

DERVAL HAMPTON

(A STORY OF THE SEA.)

CHAPTER I.
"A WET SHEET AND A FLOWING SEA."

Another long spell of the sea, including several voyages and some stirring adventures, was before Derval now, with a protracted absence from Britain. The ship was not getting ready for sea, so Captain Talbot was on shore, when a hansom cab deposited Derval and his belongings close by the gangway that led on board, where he was warmly welcomed by Joe Grummet and Harry Bowline.

"So Girtline has left us, Hal?"

"Yes, in bad health."

"And what sort of fellow is his successor?" asked Derval as they descended to the cabin.

"He is simply horrid—a cad, a brute!" exclaimed Bowline. "He is in the hold just now, and if a cask fell out of the slings on his head, it would be a good thing for all on board. He is so different from poor Girtline; he looks like an old pirate, and has stopped our promotion; but you see, Hampton, the owners think us rather young for further advancement yet. Steward, a couple of grogs; the sun is over the fore-yard!"

"When do we sail?"

"I don't exactly know, but I wish we saw Blue Peter up!"

"This Rudderhead—" began Derval, thinking of the mysterious letter.

"You'll have enough of him in time, I doubt not. He has already caused much ill-blood on board."

"How?"

"He plays the tyrant in the Captain's absence; he has stopped the men's grog for next to nothing, though he is seldom quite sober himself; he sent two of the apprentices aloft, and had them lashed to the topgallant shrouds, in sight of all the people; and, like a beast as he is, had the lashings wetted that they might shrink, a trick he must have picked up in the Canton river! He refused Joe Grummet leave, and me too, though there was no duty to do but the anchor-watch," said Bowline, referring to the two or three men appointed to look after a ship while at anchor or in port. "But hush! here he comes lumbering down the companion-ladder—screwed, I have no doubt."

Step by step he came down, his large splay feet, thick legs, the broader part of his person, his great back, short neck, and bullet-like head all appearing in succession. He looked full and scrutinisingly at the new-comer, while Hal, taking off his cap, bowed to each, and said mockingly:

"Mr. Derval Hampton—Mr. Reeve Rudderhead; Mr. Reeve Rudderhead—Mr. Derval Hampton."

The first mate eyed both viciously, particularly Bowline, who finished his grog, and eyeing him defiantly in turn, went slowly on deck, singing as he went a grotesque song:

"We bore away to the Greenland seas till we saw a
mighty whale,
The tremendous length of which, 'tis said, did reach
from the head to the tail, brave boys!
The captain on the bowsprit stood, with the mainmast
in his hand:
'Overhaul, overhaul! let the main-deck fall, and belay
her to the land, brave boys!'"

Mr. Rudderhead meanwhile seated himself on a locker and leisurely proceeded to fill a clay pipe, while quite as leisurely surveying Derval. He was a piratical, bull-dog looking fellow, about forty years of age, with a broad swollen visage, which, where it was not red by grog blossoms and blotches, was covered by cuts and scars, won in fisticuff battles in the vicinity of Wapping or the docks. His figure was powerful and suggestive of enormous brutal strength. His appearance was repugnant and dirty; he wore the kind of uniform prescribed by Curry & Co. for the officers of their ships, but it was evidently a second-hand suit, and was already greasy, foul, and frayed.

As his eyes met those of Derval, the latter felt, "by instinct swift as light," that he was face to face with an enemy—a worse one than Paul Bitts—who was, moreover, the cousin of his hostile step-mother, and no doubt in frequent communication with her.

"Oho!" said he, scraping a match and lighting his pipe; "so you are Derval Hampton, eh?"

"I am, as yet, Mr. Derval Hampton to you, sir," said our hero sharply.

"I beg your pardon, Mister Hampton," said he, lifting his cap impertinently.

"Yes; and I am third mate of this ship."

"I am the first, which you'll find out in time, so let us know each other at once. I am a sharp hand at my duty, and stand no nonsense—so keep a bright look-out, I say!" he added, adopting a bullying tone, as he had evidently been drinking; and he interlarded his conversation with many "strange oaths," which we cannot commit to paper.

"You are, I understand, a cousin of my step-mother?" said Derval, not unwilling to try and conciliate this truculent fellow, with whom his lot would be unluckily cast for some time.

"Yes, first cousin; and she told me to look very particularly after you."

"Indeed—very kind of her! But I can look pretty well after myself, and others too."

"I believe you are apt to cut up rough on occasions, and lay out to windward if you can."

"Indeed!" said Derval, his choler rising.

"And I was to see that you did your duty well, to ship and owners."

"I can do my duty without need of your supervision," said Derval, annoyed still more by the peculiar tone this obnoxious personage adopted.

"And so can I, though I don't belong to the Royal Naval Reserve," said he with a sneer.

"Nor are ever likely to do so, unless you mend your manners and your morals, too."

"What the—what do you know about me or my morals?" demanded Rudderhead, with a black look; "you lubberly haymaker!"

"I can guess much—we guess much about ships that go down, though we may not be certain about them."

"Down—what do you mean by or about down—any particular ship?" asked the other hoarsely, and with a terrible oath, while his face grew pale, all save the pimples and blotches, and his eyes glared like those of a rattlesnake.

"I mean precisely what my words infer," replied Derval disdainfully, as he quitted the cabin and went on deck, convinced that he had, by a random speech, probed some dark secret in this man's life, and stung him in some way; and in the time to come he gained a clue to it.

How a woman so refined and lady-like as Mrs. Hampton—for she was both in appearance, unquestionably—came to have such a remarkable kinsman it was difficult to say; but from that hour there was a declared feud between him and Derval, and both were prepared to carry it out to the bitter end.

Derval's indignation was very keen. Through all the years he had been away from home, the tender home-love had never died in his honest and passionate heart. To Finglecombe he had sent all he could give—letters, presents, and many a token of regard; but all in vain; and now she, who had driven him from that home—a luxurious one now—had found him an enemy, and a dangerous one, in the truculent savage, Reeve Rudderhead.

Derval hailed the return of the Captain on board with right good welcome. He was warmly welcomed by the latter, who said:

"I saw by the London Gazette, and other papers, that Her Majesty had, at the request of Lord Oakhampton, given you the Albert Medal for saving his girl's life! Long may you live to wear it, Derval; but now you must, like me, join the Reserve; you'll just be able to manage your training before we sail."

This was exactly suited to the young man's tastes and ambition; so Derval was duly commissioned as a midshipman on board H.M. training ship President, appeared in his uniform as such, with the Albert Medal on his right breast, and performed twenty-eight days drill, under the Gunnery Lieutenant, messing with the officers in the ward room.

This brief sojourn on board Her Majesty's ship, while so much active and even dirty work (which Derval luckily escaped) was being done in the Amethyst, roused the ready wrath and jealousy of Mr. Reeve Rudderhead to boiling heat against him; and consequently, when Derval again appeared on her deck, he was greeted by that personage in this manner:—

"Now, then, Mister Derval Hampton, as you have done us the honour of coming aboard again, you'll perhaps take off that dandy gold ring of yours, with the three crows—or are they three mudlarks?—on it; and go aloft and see to greasing down the foretop-mast, and setting up the maintopmast backstay."

"Very good, sir," said Derval, passing on.

"A gold ring!" muttered the bully, aside; "I'll warrant him as perfect a cock-pit beau as ever foundered in the lee-scuppers."

"What is the difference between foundering and going down?" asked Derval, as a Parthian shot, remembering how curiously the word had stung his enemy before, and a terrible scowl darkened the face of the latter, as he turned away grumbling one of his deep maledictions.

The cargo was complete now, and the ship was ready for sea; all the running rigging had been examined, and that which was unfit for service removed, and new rigging rove in its place, together with the studding gear, and "the chaffing gear," which consists of roundings or mats, battens, put upon the rigging and spars to prevent their being frayed, was all arranged under the eyes of Joe Grummet, as the ship dropped down the river, and was again taken into the Channel by old Toggle the Deal pilot.

After the two lights on the Lizard Point—the last they saw of England—melted out in distance and the obscurity of a February night, and the Amethyst was altogether clear of the English Channel, the weather became delightful, the water smooth, the skies clear, and as the wind was fair, she ran before it merrily, without tack or sheet being lifted, till the latitudes of balmy breezes and sunny days in long succession were reached.

Every other day vessels were passed, but after a time the seas became more lonely, and for many a day no sail would be in sight; and then a succession of foul winds took the Amethyst considerably out of her course, and to the westward.

The crew of a vessel while at sea is generally divided in two portions, called the starboard and port watches. The former, in a merchant ship, is the captain's watch, but is frequently commanded by the second mate; the other, the larboard or port watch, falls to the chief mate; and the periods of time occupied by each part of the crew alternately, while thus on duty, are also termed watches.

One night, after Fogo—one of the Cape de Vere Islands—had been passed, with its volcano 9,000 feet above the sea, all aflame as it now generally is, after fifty years of silence, Mr. Rudderhead was so long of coming on deck to relieve Captain Talbot, who had the starboard watch from 8 to 12, that he sent Derval below to rouse him up.

Under all circumstances Derval disliked coming in contact with this man, who was a dark and repellent fellow, haunted in his sleep by nightmares and dreams, amid which ever and anon—as sometimes when he was irritated by day—he would mutter horribly of some ship going down with all hands on board.

As Derval entered the cabin, it was lighted only by a swinging lamp in the skylight, where, with the tell-tale compass, it vibrated to and fro with every roll of the ship, and as he made his way towards the berth, where the first mate lay fast asleep with his clothes on, all ready to turn out, he became aware that Rudderhead was in one of his drunken slumbers, for he had a store of spirits in his own baggage, and often imbibed so much as to endanger the ship when in his care.

He lay on his back, his repulsive visage half seen and half sunk in shadow by the partial light of the cabin lamp, and was evidently haunted by one of his peculiar dreams just then, and was muttering about a ship called the North Star.

At first he was actually smiling, and then an expression of intense cunning and gratification stole over his face as he muttered—

"Good, good; I understand ... the Marine Insurance must stump up ... all the boats gone save one, save one," he said, in a husky whisper; "all but mine—mine! ... alongside. Where's the auger? ... here ... now, now, through outer and inner sheathing ... there is one!" and his clenched hands revolved over each other as in fancy he grasped the cross handle of an auger, and in fancy—could Derval doubt it?—was piercing a ship's side. "Three, four, five ... off, off ... now she begins to settle in the water ... they find she is going down ... now to scull for the shore ... four miles ... How they shriek, and cry, and howl ... How pale their faces look in the moonlight ... they threaten, rave, and implore me to return ... no help for them ... down they go ... down, down, down, and now they all come up with their dead faces and white hands out of the green sea. They glare at me on every side ... they grasp the gunwale of my boat—they clutch me ... Merciful Heaven!"

His mutterings terminated in a wail of horror, then came prayers, with maledictions on himself and others, as he writhed on his bed; and in the agony produced by his dream, which seemed to reach a climax of unutterable horror, while a cold and clammy sweat distilled upon his brow, and his muscular limbs shivered like aspen twigs, he awoke and half sprang out of his berth; but the effect of his vision overcame him, and for a moment he sank back on the pillow, panting rather than breathing.

On seeing that Derval was regarding him, and conscious that he must have been muttering though knowing not what he might have said, a sudden expression of alarm, mingled with defiance and malevolence, came into his face, and he staggered up.

"I have been dreaming," said he.

"So I see," observed Derval.

"See—what did you hear? I mutter odd things in my sleep, I am told. Those who hear them are not lucky. The last fellow who did so was lost overboard in the night," he added, with a diabolical grin.

Derval was silent.

"Speak, I tell you," bullied the other.

"Captain's orders are that you are instantly to relieve the deck; eight bells in the first watch have struck," said Derval, sharply, and went on deck, merely reporting that Mr. Rudderhead was coming, and the new watch was already on deck.

Derval acted with judicious care in not telling the first mate all he had heard; but the latter knew what was too often his use and wont, to mutter in his sleep, and thus a species of dread of Derval was added to his ill-concealed hatred of him.

The latter confided to Harry Bowline and to the boatswain the strange revelations Rudderhead had made in his sleep.

"The North Star, the North Star!" exclaimed Grummet, as he slapped his thigh, and with a gulp of astonishment, by which he nearly swallowed his quid; "why that's the very ship as was said to have foundered four miles off the Scilly Isles, after losing all her boats save one, in which Rudderhead, her second mate, reached St. Mary's, and I don't think the Mercantile Marine Insurance would have 'stumped up,' as he calls it, without a fight for it. I have heard him muttering in his dreams. I wish he was well out of the ship, that I do; good can't come to us with such a thief on board. My eyes! how many a better man has swung in Execution dock, and had his poor bones chained to those stumps, as we may see any day by the Essex marshes. I never liked the cut of his jib."

To Derval it was evident that what he had overheard was no dream or nightmare, simple and pure, but the recollection of a real event—the scuttling of the North Star, and leaving her to sink with all hands on board, the result of some foul scheme between himself and someone else; and now there took possession of him a great horror of this man, with whom he had to sit at table, and to converse and confer incidentally while conducting mutually the duty of the ship.

That the untoward incident of Derval coming upon him in his dream dwelt in the mate's memory, was evident, as the former frequently caught the latter regarding him with a stern and lowering eye when he thought his attention was turned another way; and once, when the mate was partially intoxicated, and had crept into the long-boat amidships to keep out of the captain's sight, Derval, who was busy near the mainmast, heard him muttering—

"Dreams—a curse upon them! Why will they haunt me? Well, well, let him suspect what he likes, but he can prove nothing, and no one can prove anything, and dead men tell no tales, as he may find out one day. She wrote me to serve him out in any fashion to suit her; but (here he uttered a terrible oath) I'll serve him out to suit myself."

She was, Derval never for a moment doubted, Mrs. Hampton. Thus he found that to avoid scrapes, to avoid tyranny, and to escape positive peril, would require all his care, all his caution and perseverance now.

Reeve Rudderhead was, we have said, a man of enormous strength, bulk, and stature; every muscle and fibre in his form had been developed and turned, as it were, to iron and wire. He was decidedly a fellow to fear physically, and to shun morally. He was quite capable of working anyone a fatal mischief whom he disliked, or who crossed him in the least way, and the contingencies of a seafaring life afford such a character many easy chances for doing so with impunity; thus Derval did not forget his hint and threat about the listener who was lost overboard.

But there were other risks to run on which he did not calculate.

Thus, one day, a top-maul, or large iron hammer kept up aloft for driving in or out the fid of the topmasts, came whizzing down from the mizen-top, where Rudderhead was supposed to be busy on something or other. It crashed upon the quarter-deck, close by where Derval was standing, and then followed the cry which always precedes anything being thrown from aloft:—

"Stand from under," sang out Rudderhead.

Derval felt himself grow pale, while a fierce gust of wrath rose in his breast, for this could not have been a chance occurrence, but a deliberate attempt to destroy him accidentally, as it were, in open daylight, and in the face of the crew; and there was an unconcealed grin on the visage of Rudderhead when rebuked by Captain Talbot for carelessness, and while making his sham excuses to Derval.

The latter thought deeply over the correspondence between Mrs. Hampton and her amiable cousin, and recalled the fragments of the letter he traced on the blotting pad, and he now could but construe or connect them thus: that they were to the effect that as he, Derval, was in the way (of whom, Rookleigh?), Rudderhead, for the old love he bore her, and for a good round sum, would rid her of him in any mode he chose, so that they might see him no more.

It was impossible to doubt now that such had been the tenor of that atrocious epistle. It might be, Derval thought in his calmer moments, that she did not mean a deadly crime to be committed to remove him from jarring with her son's interests, and that the affair of the maul was dictated by Reeve Rudderhead's own spirit of malevolence and revenge.

But what could she mean? unless it were that Rudderhead was to contrive to leave him ashore in some place where he might perish or never more be heard of; or if, when some such contingency as a tumble overboard befel him, to be in no hurry to throw him a line or cut away the life-buoy. Anyway, Derval was now completely on his guard.

He remembered how his predecessor, Paul Bitts—an enemy from the hour he joined the ship—by his cruelty, tyranny, and terror, had blotted out the short life of poor little Tom Titford on that terrible night at Fernando Noronha; and he wondered if some such untoward fate might befal himself at the hands of this unscrupulous wretch. But then Tom Tit, as they called him, was but a child compared with what Derval was now, and he resolved, as he said to Harry Bowline, "to keep his weather-eye remarkably wide open."

As for his growing inheritance, sailor like, he set no store on it then, and actually cared little, if he always had a ship, whether every shilling of it went to Rookleigh, the failings in whose disposition and character seemed to soften by time and distance, and often in lone watches of the night did Derval think he would try to love him, when the selfish little Rook of the nursery became, like himself, a man. Was he not his brother, and, moreover, the nearest kinsman he had on earth? They had the same father, though different mothers—oh, so different! Yes, yes, a day would come when Rook would cease to be under his mother's influence, and the bonds of fraternal affection would naturally strengthen between them as years rolled on.

Alas! Could Derval have foreseen the future!

About the time when the Amethyst began to feel the main equatorial current, one evening the sea, which had been as smooth as the Serpentine in Hyde Park on a summer day, suddenly became torn up by a hurricane, which a rapid fall in the barometer indicated, but scarcely in time for preparations to meet it.

The wind seemed to come from all quarters at once, as if contending for mastery, and the spray flew over the ship in blinding clouds. The weightiest blast struck her on the lee bow, and, as the yards were braced that way, she was nearly thrown on her beam ends.

"Hold on!" was the shout that went from stem to stern, and every man grasped something to prevent himself being swept overboard.

For nearly a minute the ship lay in the same position, when she righted a little, and then payed off before the blast, when Joe Grummet joined the man at the wheel.

Darkness came on with more than tropical rapidity. Luckily the royals had not been set, and topsails, close-reefed, were lowered upon the caps, while the vessel drove before her courses and fore-staysail.

"We are in for a rough night," said Mr. Rudderhead grimly, as he tied the strings of a yellow south-wester under his chin. "A night as may make some beggar lose the number of his mess, if it don't send us all to Davy Jones's locker before morning."

Twice during this short speech his eye wandered, perhaps unconsciously, to Derval; but, as the event proved, the night was to have more terror for himself than any man on board.

The sea which, from the commencement of the hurricane, had been roused into boiling surge, dashed over the ship without a moment's cessation, though she must have been going at the rate of twelve knots an hour, but as the light in the binnacle was extinguished by the tempest, no one could tell for some time which way her head lay; and for a time such was the black fury of the hurricane, that the look-out ahead could not see half the vessel's length from her, so thick were the clouds of spray raised by the force of the wind, and meanwhile the whole deck was flooded, and everything loose went washing away to leeward.

From time to time Derval thought of Rudderhead, and while doing his duty kept on his guard. Amid the hubbub and obscurity of such time there was more than one opportunity of working mischief.

Thunder, lightning, and rain were all in full chorus together for more than an hour, during which very little was said by one man to another, save brief orders, or hurried remarks.

"I think there is a little lull, sir," said Rudderhead to the Captain; "shall we keep our wind?'

"I think you are right—she is a weatherly craft, and makes little leeway. Luff her to, then!" shouted Talbot, through his trumpet.

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a great black sea came thundering like a mountain over the weather gangway, nearly tearing the long-boat from its chocks, straining and starting the lashing of the weather guns, beating open two of the lee ports, and nearly sweeping away everything movable. The hurricane now abated a little; but the Amethyst had scarcely a stitch of canvas set, yet the yards being braced up sharply, kept her steady, while ever and anon brilliant flashes of green lightning cast a ghastly glare upon the seething water, and appalling booms of thunder hurtled through the sky, to die away in distance.

About three bells, in the middle watch, there came a cry from the look-out man ahead—

"Sail on the weather bow!"

She had been revealed by a flash of lightning, and was, Harry Bowline reported, about half a mile off.

In such a tempest it might be necessary to give her as wide a berth as possible, and several night-glasses were in requisition, scanning the quarter indicated; and, among others, Derval, with his left arm round one of the fore-shrouds, kept his binocular intently to his eyes, on the look-out.

Flash after flash came in rapid succession, vivid, green, and ghastly, and with each they could all see the stranger, whom they neared fast, and made out to be a brig with her topmasts gone, her canvas split to ribbons. Bobbing up and down, she was visible only for an instant at a time, and chill fell on all who saw her, for she was evidently an old wreck, with no living being on board of her, though a dead man was seen lashed in the starboard main-shrouds, and three other corpses were dangling from lashings in the foretop.

No sound or cry came from that ghostly craft as the Amethyst swept past her within a few yards of her stern, just as one more than usually vivid flash showed her distinctly, with her torn rigging all hanging in bights and loops, the dead-lights shipped in her cabin windows, and her name painted in white letters underneath them.

"Could any of you make out her name?" asked Captain Talbot, as the flash passed away, and the wreck seemed to vanish, when the thunder burst fearfully overhead.

"I did, sir," replied Derval.

"You are very clever, Hampton. Did anyone else make it out? I should like to be sure, for the log-book."

There was no reply from anyone else, and Derval was silent, for he had a choking sensation in his throat.

"I should like to have some other warrant for her name, ere I put it in the log, than Mr. Derval Hampton's," sneered Rudderhead.

"And what did you make out her name to be?" asked Talbot.

"The North Star," replied Derval, for such was indeed the name he had seen.

"What?" roared Rudderhead, in a voice that startled all. "It is a lie—a horrid lie! He could not have made it out in this obscurity."

"How dare you say so?" asked Captain Talbot.

"I am sure of what I assert, sir," said Derval, careless of how his words affected his enemy; "she is The North Star, of Whitchurch."

Something between a groan and a curse escaped the lips of Rudderhead, whose perplexity Derval really shared, but with much of awe, while the former felt much of rage and hatred, believing, almost hoping, that the name was Derval's invention, and suggested, perhaps, by some remark overheard in the dream, on the night he was too late to relieve the deck.

"The North Star," and "of Whitchurch" too! Was it a reality, or a phantom ship sent to blast the eye-sight and terrify the heart of Reeve Rudderhead?

Any way, it was a strange and startling coincidence, the whole episode; and the perfect similitude of the name with that of the vessel of his dreams, or his crime. This, together with the terrible circumstances under which she had been seen, had, for a time, a calming effect upon the brutal temper and spirit of the first mate, whose entry of the circumstances in the log, together with the details of how the Amethyst was handled in the hurricane, proved nearly illegible, so tremulous and uncertain was the handwriting.

As daylight broke the hurricane passed away, and the clouds cleared; but not a vestige of the wreck was to be seen, so those who swept the horizon with their glasses for her could but conclude that she had gone down, with her dead, in the night.

The sea was still running very high, and the Amethyst, having no canvas set, rolled very heavily. The morning watch, whose duty extends from 4 to 8 A.M., was now on deck.

"Away aloft and cast loose the topsails," was now the Captain's order; "hoist away, lads—up to the cross-trees with them." The courses were then let fall, and pleasantly and steadily the ship bore on, rolling away before the wind.

Derval, who had never mentioned the matter of the first mate's dreams and nocturnal visits to the Captain, had much difficulty in assuring Hal Bowline and Joe Grummet that the name he had given was that which he had really seen; for the boatswain was especially unbelieving. He laughed loudly again and again, slapped his thigh vigorously, and Derval's back too, supposing that the name was all an invention for the purpose of "giving that piratical beggar a dig—hitting him on the raw," and so forth; but the episode elicited, as usual at sea, a number of anything but enlivening or hilarious anecdotes, concerning wrecks and marvels of the deep.

"The last time I saw any dead bodies adrift upon the sea," said Joe, "was just before I shipped aboard this here craft. We had left Sidney in June, bound for Shanghai, and had fair winds till we reached latitude 6, south, when the glass fell low, the sea rose and the wind too, for we lost our fore-topmast, which snapped off at the cap like a clay-pipe. The gale increased, so we hauled to the wind on the port tack, under a close-reefed foresail, main-topsail, and fore-stay sail, and plenty of cormorants were flying about us and perching on the yard-arms. When the gale abated, and all but the watch were thankfully about to turn in, there was a cry of 'Wreck to leeward!' and there came drifting past us a raft made of planks, poles, and spars, on which was a poor wretch, almost naked as he came into the world, famished, starving, and well-nigh raving mad, the last survivor of only four unfortunate fellows who had escaped from a sinking ship. On the second day the ship sank, one of the men fell off the raft into the water, and was devoured by sharks under the eyes of the three survivors, around whom the sea-lawyers began to gather on every side. A second man died from exhaustion, and the other two threw him into the sea, hoping that then the sharks would go and leave them in peace. But the taste of human flesh seemed to increase their longings, and their numbers also, and still more when the third man fell dead on the raft and his mess-mate was too weak to throw him into the sea. They seemed to swarm up out of the deep now on every side; they crowded round the frail raft, which was level with the water, so that every wave rolled over it. Eagerly the sharks watched its only occupant on every hand, their dorsal fins quivering with hungry longings, their rows of awful teeth glittering head over head, side by side, in close ranks. Look which way he might, he saw nothing but eyes and teeth—eyes and teeth—and for well-nigh a week this lasted. He could neither sleep nor lie down, for dread of falling into the sea and being rent piece-meal. The hot sun of these scorching latitudes beat all day long upon his defenceless head; he was without food or water at last, and when we got him aboard was well-nigh a raving lunatic, and he had terrible dreams at night, like our friend in the cabin—dreams of sharp teeth and eyes, sharp teeth and glistening eyes, for long after. Another day of such work and we might have found him like his mess-mate, as the newspapers say, 'with the wital spark extinct.'"

Greatly to the disgust and annoyance of Mr. Rudderhead, Captain Talbot, having as we have said, a proportion of Royal Naval Reserve men on board, when the weather was fine, was fond of training the crew to the guns and small arms, making and shortening sail, reefing topsails, and otherwise manoeuvring the ship; and when she was about the latitude of St. Helena, it would seem as if the skill and mettle of her crew were on the point of being tangibly proved.

Foul winds, as stated, had driven the Amethyst considerably to the westward of her course. One day, in the early part of the morning watch, Derval was regarding with pleasure, as he often did, the strange beauty of the early day-break on the vast and wide expanse of ocean. The first streaks of grey and then yellow light stretched for miles and miles along the horizon eastward, indicating the line where sky and ocean met; throwing a broadening sheet of radiance upon the face of the undulating deep, imparting a weird beauty to it, which, as a writer says, combined with the boundlessness and unknown depth of the sea around you, "gives one a feeling of loneliness, of dread, and of melancholy foreboding, which nothing else in nature can give."

Day broke and brightened fast, and the Amethyst was on a wind, with topsails, courses, jib, and spanker set, when suddenly the cry, which always attracts attention on board ship, "Sail ho!" was given by one of the watch.

"Where?" demanded Derval.

"Right astern, sir."

Derval took the glass from the cleats, where it hung in the companion, and saw a vessel, equal in tonnage evidently to the Amethyst, heading directly after her, with every stitch of canvas spread. She was a great clipper-built brigantine.

"She is following us, certainly," said one of the men.

"What can she want with us?" asked another.

"Has lost her reckoning—or is out of water or something else," suggested the first speaker.

"Are you going to shorten sail, and let her come up with us?" asked Harry Bowline.

"Certainly not without orders," said Derval; "go below and report this to the Captain."

In a few minutes Captain Talbot came on deck, and took the glass from Derval's hand. After a time, he said:

"I make her out to be a sharp-bowed or clipper-built barque or brigantine, with a small mast rigged aft, with an enormous fore and aft mainsail; she is about 600 tons or more, and full of men—very full of men, for a merchant vessel."

"How far is she astern, sir?"

"About eight miles—I can see the water curling white under her fore-foot."

"She shows no colours or signal."

"Which she would be sure to do if she wished to speak to us; any way, we'll show her ours. Run up the ensign."

No response was made to this, and the blue flag of the Naval Reserve floated out in vain from the gaff; and the silent craft, with its crowded deck, came steadily on, and was overhauling the Amethyst so fast that ere long, as the distance between them lessened, many coloured and even black faces could be seen among her crew.

"She does not require to speak with us, sir," said Joe Grummet; "she would show her colours else."

"Then what the devil does she mean by keeping in our wake in this fashion?" said Captain Talbot testily.

"Her crew crowd her deck as thick as bees," observed Joe, when the whole flush line of the stranger's deck could be seen, as her head went down into the trough of the sea and her stern rose alternately. The whole of the Amethyst's company were on deck now, and the strange craft was an object of undivided attention.

"In these days of steam," said Captain Talbot, with a smile that was not quite a smile, "one may well think that a pirate is as much a thing of the past as a slaver in these seas; but the bearing of this craft is very suspicious, and we must risk nothing with a cargo so valuable."

Joe Grummet, who had been looking at her from the mizen-rigging, now reported that she had portlids partly triced up, and that right amidships she had something covered by a tarpaulin that was certainly not a boat, and, if not a boat, was very probably a long-range gun, and that she had a Chilian or Brazilian look about her, "that with the coloured lot on her deck certainly suggested that it would be as well to give her as wide a berth as possible."

"Cast loose the royal," ordered Captain Talbot, "and set the fore and main studding sails, and the topgallant studding sails."

This was all speedily done, and the ship began to tear through the water, on which the brigantine set her square main topsail, but still did not show her colours.

"It is clearly a case of chase, and had she not such a crowd of men—by Jove! I would lie to and try conclusions with her," said Captain Talbot, whose cheek flushed, and whose eyes sparkled with excitement.

To make the sails draw better, he now ordered water to be thrown on them, and to wet them down by buckets whipped up to the masthead. He then ordered the vessel's course to be changed more than once, but the craft in pursuit changed hers in the same manner, and by noon was drawing nearer and nearer.

Matters were becoming serious now, and the excitement on the Amethyst was increasing. Captain Talbot next ordered the guns to be cast loose, the powder and small arms to be brought on deck, with the cutlasses and revolvers, and a grim expression of something very like satisfaction mingled with defiance became visible on the faces of the men, as they buckled on their waist-belts and filled their cartridge-boxes.

"Hurrah!" cried Joe Grummet, applying the edge of a cutlass to his hard, brown palm; "we'll tip them a twist of the Royal Naval Reserve."

"I hope it won't come to that, Grummet," said the Captain seriously; "she has ten men for each of us evidently."

In the tasks of setting more canvas and wetting it all down from aloft, none had been more active than Mr. Reeve Rudderhead, but his bearing became very nervous and restless when he saw the lines of the guns laid across the deck, the rammers and sponges laid by their sides, the port tackles triced to the lids, and expected every moment to hear Captain Talbot issue an order to throw the ship in the wind.

The latter, however, had no such intention if it could be avoided. He continued dead before the wind with all his yards squared, knowing well that a square-rigged vessel always sailed better so, while fore and aft vessels have most speed on a wind; moreover, as the breeze was light, he spread more canvas than the chase could do, having royals, fourteen studding-sails, and sky-sails fore and aft.

The entire day all hands remained on deck, and what food they had was all taken there. The wind varied a good deal and fell light sometimes on board the Amethyst, while, as if by ill-luck, the chase seemed to have it steadily, and was provokingly enabled to preserve her distance—about two miles.

"Look out!" cried Rudderhead, ducking below the gunnel, as a white puff spirted out from the black bow of the stranger, and a shot, which came ricochetting along the wave-tops, dropped into the water far astern of the Amethyst.

"A hint of what is in store for us," said Captain Talbot; and by sunset she was still coming on, bringing the freshing breeze with her, and the snow-white foam seemed to curl higher and higher round the bright copper that flashed upon her bows.

It was with an emotion of considerable relief that, after a day of such excitement, Captain Talbot saw the sun of the tropics shedding his light like a long level ray of fire from the verge of the horizon, and going down beyond the world of waters which were overspread by a darkness sudden and complete, for luckily there was no moon, and the night was a very gloomy one for those latitudes.

All lights on board were extinguished, the studding-sails and sky-sails were all taken off the ship, the course of which was altered four points; the port-tacks were brought aft, the starboard yard-heads trimmed accordingly, and the Amethyst passed away into the darkness, leaving astern, floating in the water, a ship's lighted lantern attached to a barrel as a decoy—a suggestion of Derval's, and greatly did the Captain compliment him thereon.

This light, which was visible from the deck, continued to bob about on the waves for some time, and no doubt the stranger would continue to steer directly for it, and very probably ran it down, as about an hour after it was set afloat, it suddenly vanished, and by that time the Amethyst was considered safe, all the more so that the wind came more aft for the direction she had taken, and again her yards were squared, but no light was placed in the binnacle; the second mate, Tom Tyeblock, steered her by the light of the stars, and perfect silence was maintained during the night.

When day broke not a vestige of the chase was visible, even from the masthead; the guns were made fast, and the portlids also, the arms and ammunition were all sent below, and the vessel was kept off to her course.

Ere long she reached the 40th degree of southern latitude, and then her prow was pointed to the wide and stormy ocean which divides Africa from Australia; and now gigantic albatrosses—the "man-o'-war bird," as the sailors name them—were seen around the ship, with those graceful little birds which resemble swallows in shape and mode of flying, though smaller—Mother Carey's chickens. "And all the world knows, or ought to know," as a sailor told Derval, "that Mother Carey was an aunt of St. Patrick."

CHAPTER II.
TURTLE ISLAND.

"He didn't like seeing the guns cast loose, and the powder and small arms brought on deck, this precious first mate of ours," said Joe Grummet one day to Derval, when they were up aloft; "cos why? he is a coward, and cowards are always cruel. He was once a captain, but his certificate is suspended—though I don't know for how long, but suspended it is—cos why? He caught a poor stowaway lad on board, half dead with confinement and want of food, and how do you think he treated him? He lashed a ring-bolt with spunyarn athwart his open jaws to prevent his shrieks being heard when he ropes-ended him, and trained a dog to bite him; he headed him up in a cask and rolled him round the deck; and this work went on for days. He made a timber hitch on a line, and hoisted him by the neck three feet from the deck at a time, till his eyes started from their sockets, and blood and froth oozed from his mouth, flogging him day after day, till one came, when the poor boy was found dead under the lee of the long-boat; and then his body, without service or prayer, was chucked overboard.* Now he sails as chief mate, but I wonder our owners took him aboard at all."

* A fact.

This anecdote served to increase Derval's disgust for Rudderhead, who seemed almost to divine that he was the subject of conversation, as he stood on the quarter-deck, with his eyes steadily regarding them in the foretop.

Amid fine weather, and accompanied by steady and pleasant breezes, the Amethyst made the Island of Desolation, or Kerguelen's Land, the abode alone of petrels, albatrosses, gulls, and sea-swallows, on the rifted rocks of which, washed by incessant rains, nothing grows but saxifrage—a lonely and most melancholy place.

After passing it, the ship's log shows that she encountered a gale, and that the watch had to take in the main topgallant-sail and mainsail, with the fourth reef of the topsails; and set the mainstay-sail. In the evening she was under close-reefed topsails, a reefed foresail, and was shipping heavy seas.

Fine weather came again, and one fine forenoon, a week or so after, when Derval had the watch, the cry "Land ahead!" from the look-out men caused every glass to be levelled at a dark-blue streak, that rose like a cloud from the shining sea, upon the lee bow; and a reference to the chart showed that it was one of those sequestered and seldom visited isles in the South Sea, in latitude 60 south, and 110 west longitude, and is known as Turtle Island.

It was rocky, hilly, and seemed to rise fast from the sea, and to loom large, through a kind of white haze, exhaled from the latter by the heat of the sun; thus, by the bearings given, the reader will see that it was a considerable distance south of the regular line from Britain to Australia.

As Captain Talbot was anxious to procure some turtle, he gave orders to stand towards it, and about nightfall came to anchor in seven fathoms water, in a fine sandy bay where the waves rippled on the beach as quietly as those of an island lake, and where groves of trees grow close to the water's edge.

The volcanic rocks at the mouth of the bay were literally covered with sea-hens, gigantic albatrosses, and other feathered tribes; wild boars and wild goats could be seen by the glass ere the sun set, but luckily no sign of inhabitants, on which Talbot rather congratulated himself, as he knew well the isle possessed them, and that, like all other South Sea savages, they were vindictive, cruel, and hostile to all strangers.

By daybreak next morning two boats' crews, under Rudderhead and Derval, taking with them handspikes or capstan bars, pulled in shore to search for turtle. They beached the boats at a place where a number of large turtle were seen, well up on the shore, near some dense brushwood, out of which black cocks flew from time to time, and near which some great seals lay basking in the sun.

In high spirits the boats' crews sprang ashore, and intercepting the retreat of the turtle, some of which were of such a size as to be two or three hundred-weight, they proceeded with the handspikes to turn them on their backs and leave them thus till several were captured, and then tumbled into the boats.

Full of natural interest at treading on new soil, and looking on that which he had never seen before, Derval, penetrating through the brushwood, advanced some hundred yards upward and inshore, and heard with pleasure the tender rustling of the leaves in the morning sea-breeze, while inhaling the perfume of the aromatic plants and myrtle-trees. The brilliant green of the woods that crept up the sides of the hills, which in one place were so lofty that the haze shrouded their summits, were all novel and delightful, after the monotony of the sea and sky during a long voyage.

While observing the brilliant tints and peculiar shadows given by the morning sun to some volcanic rocks rising from the nearest grove of trees, he became suddenly aware that they were swarming with black savages, whose weapons, whatever they were, glittered in the sun, and who from their eyrie were evidently watching the ship in the bay, if not the party in quest of turtle on the beach.

He had scarcely made this discovery, when he became aware that Reeve Rudderhead was by his side, with what intent he could not divine. Curiosity had no doubt prompted him to follow Derval, simply to see what was to be seen, and opportunity made him suddenly avail himself of the time to do the fell crime he subsequently committed.

Enemies though they were, who never spoke but on inevitable matters connected with ship duty, Derval could not refrain from drawing his ungracious messmate's attention to the watching savages and their hostile aspect, adding:

"Don't you think, sir, that we had better retire?"

They were already in motion and leaping down the rocks, with yells, brandishing their spears and clubs.

"Retire?" growled Rudderhead with an oath, "I think so, unless we mean to share the fate of Captain Cook; so here goes for one. As for you," he added, with one of his ferocious maledictions, "they may pick your bones, and welcome!" Then whirling the heavy hand-spike he carried, circularly in the air, he struck Derval a blow on the back of the head that felled him bleeding, stunned, and senseless, among the brushwood!

The moment he had accomplished this terrible and atrocious act, he went plunging down to the beach, shouting—

"The savages—the natives are upon us; into the boats with you for your lives, and shove off to the ship!"

Alarmed by this cry, and being unarmed, the party were forced to be content with what turtle they had got—some seven or eight—and leaping into their two boats, pushed off at once from the shore, and shipping their oars pulled away with a will, just as a naked horde of dark-skinned savages, perfectly nude, save in the matter of the bead ornaments that hung about their persons, shrieking, whooping, yelling, and dancing like mad things, came rushing with war-clubs, spears, powerful bows and arrows, close to the edge of the water, and even rushing into it up to their waists.

The boats' crews could see their dark, copper-coloured skins, their hair which was longer and straighter than the wool of the negro, their gleaming eyes and white glistening teeth. An arrow or two whistled past, but wide of the mark, and with laughing shouts of defiance the party brought their boats sheering alongside the ship, when the turtles had ropes hitched round them, and were quickly conveyed on board.

"Hoist in the boats," was now the order of Rudderhead, in his guilty haste anticipating the authority of the captain for doing so.

In the haste and confusion with which they had embarked, the crew of each boat probably thought—if they thought on the subject at all—that Derval was on board the other; nor was it till the boats were being actually hoisted in on each quarter, that he was missed, and Joe Grummet asked, with some asperity and much alarm:

"Where is the third mate—where is Mr. Hampton?"

Then the boats' crews looked inquiringly and blankly into each other's faces.

"Left on shore!" said Captain Talbot. "Good heaven! what a fate he must have met by this time!"

"We had not a moment to lose, sir, as you must have seen, if you had been watching us," said Rudderhead sullenly and with averted eyes; "his safety was his own look-out—not mine; and I think the third mate could take jolly good care of himself."

The Captain was silent; the beach was now covered by a dingy horde of savages, yelling and brandishing their weapons in defiance at the ship, and he could not for a moment doubt that Derval Hampton must have perished at their hands.

As for Mr. Reeve Rudderhead, he had not the smallest doubt about it either, believing that the little life he had left, if any, in Derval, would speedily be beaten out of him by the knob-sticks or war-clubs of the islanders.

All on board—save Reeve Rudderhead—sorrowed for Derval, and were loud in their praises and vehement in their regret (for, as an officer, he was active, vigilant, and, if distant, yet most kind), and none, perhaps, more than Captain Talbot, who valued him highly for his gentlemanly bearing, good appearance, skill, and conscientious interest in his duty; and in all this the Captain was joined by old Joe Grummet, who would miss the listener to many a yarn of the sea, and who sighed heavily, Like a head wind through a hawse-hole, slapped his thigh, viciously chewed his quid, and clenched his hard first many times, menacingly, while swearing "strange oaths," and objurgating the eyes, limbs, and blood of some individual unnamed, but who was shrewdly supposed to be the first mate.

Closely did the Captain and his officers question the boats' crews, but nothing could be elicited from them, save the facts that the first and third mates had gone a little way inland together, and the former would seem to have come back alone; but yet that Derval was not specially missed till the boats were hoisted in; so Grummet and Hal Bowline felt sure there must have been some treachery at work, and that the most artful savage on Turtle Island had been Reeve Rudderhead, and the brutal indifference of the latter greatly exasperated them.

"What better could you expect of a fellow who was neither man nor boy, sojer nor sailor?" growled Rudderhead. "A lubber he was—always reading when he should have been knotting, splicing, and learning to box the compass."

Reading was not to the speaker's taste, though grog was, and he drank it at night to keep out the cold, by day to cure the heat, never sipping it, "but shipping it in bulk, at a mouthful," so Joe Grummet said.

But now, regrets for Derval apart, active work was cut out for the crew of the Amethyst.

Thick as bees the dark natives seemed to be swarming around the shores of the bay; the alarm and muster of them seemed to be general, and more than a score of pretty large canoes, full of armed warriors, paddling the water into foam, howling like madmen, and all in a frantic state of activity, shot out of mangrove creeks and other places where they would seem to have been concealed, and very soon the ship was nearly environed with them.

The small arms were all distributed by this time, the guns cast loose and shotted with grape, the ports triced up, and the watch on deck were ordered to prepare for sea. The courses were let fall, the topsails half-hoisted, and the ship was sheered to her anchor, i.e. steered towards it while weighing, so as to keep the wind and current ahead, and thus lessen the friction on the hawse-pipe.

If the intentions of these people were hostile, which Captain Talbot and his crew never doubted, they were not immediately aggressive, but continued to paddle round and round the ship, coming as near as they dared, as they had probably been fired upon by other vessels and knew the effect of cannon and musketry.

The windlass bars were all shipped, but there was a great and altogether unexpected delay in getting the anchor a-trip or even roused. The flukes seemed to hold on to something, and for a time the bars were vainly strained in the grasp of the seamen, but "the main piece," or beam of the windlass, remained immovable on its iron spindles, and the oaths and execrations of Mr. Rudderhead, who, in his anxiety, began to think of slipping the cable, were loud and bitter. The mouth of the bay was becoming well-nigh blocked up by canoes, and the minds of all on board the Amethyst were full of those stories which ever and anon the public prints give, of the wholesale massacre of ships' crews by savages in the isles of the South Sea.

To intimidate them Captain Talbot ordered a 9-pounder, loaded with a blank cartridge, to be fired; but like blank firing on a mob at home, this precisely made matters worse, for even while the echoes of the gun pealed over the water, seeing no effect followed, the savages uttered screams of defiance and pulled closer, with the evident intention of boarding, and arrows began to whizz over the ship, or stick quivering into her sides and deck every instant.

At that instant the clanking of the windlass pawls was heard, a welcome sound; the anchor was roused, "up-torn, reluctant from its oozy bed," and was seen dripping a-cockbill at the cat-head. The topsails were fully hoisted and the courses sheeted home, but there was very little wind, so the ship's progress was slow, and the arrows were flying faster than ever. Captain Talbot had his cheek laid open by one, and three of the crew were more or less wounded, one by a barbed reed, which cost Dr. Strang the greatest trouble to extract, and perceiving that the strangers were taking to flight emboldened the pursuers who came so close that they were endeavouring to reach the side plates and chains.

"Depress the guns to port and starboard, fire wherever these devils are thickest, and blaze away the small-arm men," cried Captain Talbot, whose face was streaming with blood.

The savages, their canoes huddled close together, jostling and crashing side by side, were now nearly all within pistol-range: thus the effect of the double broadside, together with a sputtering fire from the breechloading rifles over the gunnel, had a terrific effect upon them. The simultaneous roar of the 9-pounders burst like thunder over the waters of the bay; for a brief space the vessel was shrouded in smoke, and amid it the crew could hear that the defiant war-yells had given place to those of terror, rage, and agony.

As the light smoke curled up through the rigging, or went ahead with the wind, and the guns were drawn in for reloading, a scene of terrible devastation became visible. Many of the canoes were dashed to pieces and floated in fragments on the water, clutched desperately by hands that had relinquished the bow, the spear, or the war-club. Other canoes were riddled and sinking with all on board. Scores of black heads were bobbing about like fishermen's floats, and all around the Amethyst the clear blue water of the bay was streaked with blood.

The groans and gurglings of the wounded and dying who floated about were somewhat heart-sickening.

"Cease firing the guns," cried the Captain, "but pick off any scoundrel within range of the small arms."

Thus from the waist and quarter on both sides a desultory fire was maintained; most deliberate were the aims taken at any black head that appeared, for the crew had been thoroughly alarmed and exasperated. Just as the ship got clear of the bight or little bay, and the wind began to freshen, a most singular act of retribution took place.

As the guns and ports were being made fast, Reeve Rudderhead chanced—for what reason or by what impulse he knew not—to look over the side, when he perceived just beneath him a savage crouching in the main chains dripping with blood from a wound in his throat, and while hopeless of mercy, fearing to trust himself to the water while the deadly rifles were in activity over his head. Finding himself discovered, quick as thought, with deadly and unerring hand, he launched a spear at the first mate's head, and leaping into the water was seen no more.

The lance, which had a small barbed head, went right through the two cheeks of Mr. Rudderhead, who uttered a howl of rage and anguish, as he rushed back fairly "spritsail-yarded," as the sailor's said, and with his mouth so full of blood that he was soon speechless and well-nigh choked, for a labial artery had been cut, and when Dr. Strang removed the lance, by first sawing off its head, the hæmorrhage was so great that the crew began to think—if they did not precisely hope—that the wounded man would "slip his cable."

The wounds were dressed, a good horn of grog was next given him, and he was tucked into his berth, where, doubtless, his reflections would be of a somewhat mingled character. His visage had received a double wound, which, though he had not much beauty to mar, would render him unpleasant to look upon for the remainder of his life. He had no compunction for his treacherous conduct to Derval, even in the least degree, and he was chiefly occupied in surmising whether he had killed him outright, or if the savages were—like most of the South Sea islanders—cannibals, what they might do if they found him dead or alive; and, lastly, whether Mrs. Hampton would "come down handsomely" on learning that she was—as her letter had it—rid of him; then he savagely cursed his present plight, and lay growling on his pillow, while the breeze freshened and sail was made on the ship, and ere night fell upon the sea Turtle Island was out of sight.

And now to record the retribution referred to!

The arrow-wounds of Captain Talbot and others progressed most favourably under Dr. Strang's skilful treatment; but whether it was that the blood of Rudderhead was in an unhealthy state, or that the spearhead had been poisoned, it was difficult to discover, as the hurts he had received, so far from healing, grew daily worse and worse. His agony increased till it drove him to madness; he could neither eat nor drink. His face swelled up and became discoloured until he was something frightful to look upon, and times there were when his groans, prayers, and imprecations rang through the whole ship, and chilled the very souls of the men in the watches of the night.

To Dr. Strang it was soon evident that he was dying; but he had much vitality in him, and died hard, in his latter hours raving of the scuttled ship or the stowaway, of Derval Hampton, and many other persons and events. The wind was blowing a heavy and increasing gale, and the Amethyst was scudding under close-reefed topsails, in a perilous and chopping sea, when Rudderhead passed away, clutching the Captain's hands, as if he could retain him in this world, and passed from it, impenitent for the past, yet hopeless of the future; and the fiat of the doctor was that the ship could not be too soon rid of his remains.

At that crisis the brevity of even a funeral at sea was dispensed with, and he was thrown overboard to leeward, into the trough of an angry midnight sea, with four 9-pound shot at his heels—buried precisely as he had buried the poor stowaway boy, without a prayer, finding a grave "unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown."

As if his departure had been awaited for by the spirit of the storm, the latter lulled rapidly, and, when day broke, the cheerful cry of "Land ahead!" announced that the bold and rocky south-west cape of Tasmania was only ten miles distant, and bearing north-east, with the mountains, snow-capped ate that season, in the back-ground.

Next day saw the Amethyst working through D'Encastreaux's Channel, sixteen miles eastward of it, to her safe anchorage off Hobart Town, from whence the mail took home the intelligence of Derval Hampton's fate on Turtle Island. The fight with the natives there formed a passing newspaper paragraph, and, so far as he was concerned, there was an end of it.

When Greville Hampton—that sorely-changed man, whose god had become gold—heard of his eldest son's miserable fate, "some natural tears he shed," as memory went back to the little golden-haired boy that was wont to nestle at Mary's knee, in the little cottage which was as much a thing of the past as herself. Master Rookleigh Hampton heard of it with perfect philosophy, as became, he thought, a lad of his years; and Mrs. Hampton, as in duty bound, put on, for as brief a period as decency required, a most becoming suit of mourning. But there was one who, when he read of the event while glancing over the newspaper, really sorrowed for Derval—Lord Oakhampton, who, when he looked at his happy little daughter in her budding beauty, and thought of what might have been, and how nearly he lost her, could not but regret the untimely fate of the brave young sailor to whom he owed her life and safety, and said much to her on the subject that made the gentle girl feel deeply.

Four more years passed on, and the name and existence of Derval Hampton became almost forgotten in his father's house, or was, perhaps, remembered chiefly by his nurse, old Patty Fripp.

By that time Rookleigh, strangely precocious, had become—in his sixteenth year—almost a man ere boyhood was past, and during that part of his career, he showed indeed how "the child is the father of the man." Greedy, avaricious, like Mr. Ralph Nickleby (in his youth) he was wont to lend to his companions and schoolfellows halfpence to be repaid by pence, and so forth; and his disposition was further largely leavened with cruelty, which seemed born in him, and bade defiance to all remonstrance. Servants, horses, dogs, and even insects felt its virulence, and when Mr. Asperges Laud spoke reprehensively on the subject, his mother would merely urge that "he was just like other boys," and that all boys are cruel. And already in his sixteenth year, by the influence of companions, though selfish and avaricious to a degree, he, through the medium of billiards, cards, and a betting-book, was utterly wasting the time during which he was waiting for the rent-roll which his mother assured him must one day be his. He was tall, well-made and well-featured, for both his parents were handsome, but the expression of his face, particularly of his shifty green eyes—for they were less golden-hazel in tint than those of his mother—proved unpleasant to all who knew him, and indicated a great latent spirit of evil and malevolence.

In the succession of his tutors, in the society with which he mingled, and in all his surroundings, Rookleigh Hampton had a thousand advantages that the unfortunate Derval had never known, yet with them all he did not eventually make a particular figure amid the circle in which he moved.

Though lavish enough in his expenditure upon himself, and even on those who flattered him, ministered unto him, and made life lively and pleasant by pandering to his weaknesses, the leading features of his character were gross selfishness and avarice or acquisitiveness, all of which he seemed to have inherited from his mother, or through the force of his father's latter thoughts, and were thus, to the manner, born in him.

As when poor Derval sailed on his fatal voyage, Greville Hampton might be found daily in his luxurious library, settling mortgages, signing contracts, adjusting ground-rents, buying up land and old manor-houses to remodel or remove for new ones—up to the eyes among deeds and papers, with old Mr. Stephen De Murrer, the family solicitor, a denizen of Gray's Inn, who about this time began to exert himself anew in the peerage claim of his lucrative employer, and eventually visited Lord Oakhampton, at his house in Tyburnia, on the subject.

Proud and haughty by nature, though a scrupulously well-bred and most aristocratic-like man, his lordship could be very cold and repellent to those he disliked; thus his reception of the stout and deliberate old lawyer, when the latter was ushered into the stately drawing-room overlooking the park, was neither soothing nor encouraging.

"You are a bold fellow, Mr.—oh—Mr.——"

"De Murrer," said the lawyer, bowing.

"Yes—a bold fellow, sir, to come to me personally on this subject, of which I admit having heard before—a claim to my hereditary peerage by this whilom spendthrift—obscure beggar, and latterly successful speculative builder! Absurd, sir! The matter has no face upon it—won't hold water," continued Lord Oakhampton, scornfully; "and anyway, I beg to refer you to my solicitors at Gray's Inn."

"If, my Lord—if the assumption that your great ancestor was summoned by mistake to the House of Peers, in the reign of Queen Anne, is proved—and it is also proved that the real heir was then in existence—the heir from whom my client is descended—what then, my Lord?"

Mortification, exasperation, and pride made the haughty heart of Lord Oakhampton thrill painfully, and he listened to this, and much more that the little lawyer had to advance, as one in a dream. The flies buzzed about the flowers in a magnificent jardiniere; a French clock ticked monotonously on the mantelpiece; and the busy life of London outside, went on as a ceaseless stream; but he felt as if all this evil were about to happen, not to himself, but to someone else, in the confusion and irritation of his mind.

"We shall suppose this peculiar claim made good and clear in law, Mr.—Mr.——"

"De Murrer," suggested the lawyer, blandly.

"What would be the result?"

"Can you ask me?" said Mr. De Murrer; "most calamitous to your Lordship, I assure you."

"In what way, sir?"

"What way?"

"Don't repeat my words, sir!"

"With the title would go lands and estate, plate, pictures—everything, even to your household effects!"

Lord Oakhampton grew pale—very pale, yet less at the thought of himself than of his daughter, for the world was all before her yet. Rallying a little, he said:—

"You cannot think, Mr. De Murrer, that I will yield without a struggle—and a desperate one too!"

"Unquestionably not, my Lord; only——"

"Only what?" he asked, impatiently.

"With the solid and simple proofs we——"

"Proofs that must be submitted to the legal acumen and most searching analysis of my law advisers!"

"Indubitably, my Lord; yet the dates are, fortunately for us, not remote ones."

"Indeed!"

"Your Lordship's great-grandfather Derval, to whom a great mass of the estate came by marriage with the Mohuns, was called to the Upper House in the year of the Union with Scotland, 1707, and sat in the first British House of Lords, as the direct heir of Derval, Lord Oakhampton, who was forfeited under Edward IV., but was restored by Henry VII. for his service against the King of Scotland; yet your great-grandsire was so summoned in ignorance that his eldest brother, who had quarrelled with his family, was not dead, but was married, and settled in Bermuda, where he became ancestor, in the third degree, of Greville Hampton, now of Finglecombe."

"Intolerable dry-as-dust stuff this!" exclaimed Lord Oakhampton, his pride and passion rising again. "Do you imagine that I am an entire committee of privileges, to listen to all this twaddle, and that the title that has come to me, through a long line of stainless ancestors, is to be disturbed by the outrageous pretensions of an obscure colonist's grandson. Moreover, sir, do you think that I am also unaware how men of your trade make it their business to rake up such claims if they can, and assume to guide the destinies of the rich and noble, as the means of bringing money to their own coffers?"

To this somewhat injurious speech, the little lawyer only shrugged his shoulders, and smiled deprecatingly, as he replied:

"I can easily understand, and well pardon, your Lordship's natural irritation at the prospect all this action-at-law involves; the loss of rank and position—wealth and political influence; your daughter, at her very entry into life and society, reduced, like yourself, to the condition of a commoner; the newspaper comments—the nine days' wonder of London; the sneers of the once servile, and the mockery of the malevolent, and of all who take a cruel delight in strange reverses of fortune; but I would beg of you to think over the matter to be contended; for the mere announcement that not only was your title about to be contested, but your property litigated, would bring any creditors you have, like a swarm of hornets on you."

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!

With all that conviction implied, a great stupor—the stupor of utter horror—fell upon him, and he could have wept tears of rage and despair.

Defenceless, helpless, powerless, almost petrified by the whole situation, he gazed after the ship, on which sail after sail was spread to catch the land breeze, as she already began to lessen in distance upon the blue and shining sea; then sight seemed to pass from him—a blindness to descend upon his eyes; he became faint, and, falling on the earth, with the last effort of sense, crept under some of the gigantic ferns, with which the island abounds, and for a time remembered no more.

When sense again came, and he looked about him, the shadows were falling eastward; the ship had become diminished to a speck upon the ocean, then reddened by the setting sun. He gazed after her as if his soul followed her, and when he could see even the spectrum of her no longer, a groan escaped him, and he burst into tears.

On one hand spread the boundless sea; on the other, a succession of knolls and hills and bluffs, with pine-covered summits, and little grassy vales between them, all glowing under the gleaming west.

What was to be his fate?

He dared not speculate upon it, though whatever was in store for him must be close indeed now!

Dipping his handkerchief in a runnel he bathed the back of his head, thus removing the clotted and extravasated blood, and then bandaged up the wound with his necktie. A deep draught taken in the hollow of his hands from the same pool revived him, and a few wild peaches, figs, and grapes afforded him food; after which hermit-like repast he seated himself against a rock and strove to think—to think, of what? While the lower portion of the western sky assumed a vermilion hue, and the upper was violet braced with gold; sunk in shadow now, the waves rose with a silvery sheen upon the yellow sand, their ripple alone breaking the stillness of the place and time; but the moment the sun, with its tropical rapidity, sank beyond the sea, all these varied and wonderful tints passed away at once.

Derval remembered the picturesque elements of the scene afterwards; at the time, he was certainly not in the mood to appreciate them.

The parrots, pigeons, and straw-necked ibises had all gone to their nests; some kangaroo-rats (about the size of rabbits) and squirrels were flitting about; Derval's first fear was of snakes, but he saw none.

The multitude of savages that in the morning had been swarming on the shore, had all disappeared, and gone inland to their kraals and villages; but how long would he be able to elude them; and as for their habits and nature, he could not doubt that they were in any way less terrible and revolting than those of other South Sea islanders, most of whom are cannibals.

As he thought of the home he had quitted years ago, of his father's changed nature and indifference, his brother's selfishness, his stepmother's unrelenting malevolence, and Reeve Rudderhead's cruel treachery, all culminating in the present catastrophe, leaving him to perish helpless and unavenged, excitement made his wound burst out afresh, and he staunched it again with difficulty.

The southern constellations came out in all their wonderful brilliance, and under their silvery light, he sat lost in thoughts that wrung his heart. How long—even if he found food and concealment—might it be ere a ship passed that way; and if one did, how was he to attract the attention of those on board—how signal to them unseen by the savage inhabitants of the isle?

The memory of much that he had read, of men wrecked or marooned in lonely and desolate places, together with the fancies of a quick and fertile imagination, added greatly to the poignancy of his mental sufferings. For in its desperation his situation was a maddening one, and calculated to blind him with horror and despair.

Was he to perish of starvation and exposure in the groves of the island, or to find a death of torture at the hands of its inhabitants, without obtaining even a grave? for there was a detail in the future after death, that made his blood run cold to think of.

And was this unthought-of fate to be the end of all his once bright day-dreams, his hopes and aspirations! And were all his bright ambitions and little vanities—the vanities and ambitions of ardent youth—to end in less and worse than utter nothingness?

He feared to move about even in search of food, lest the track of his footsteps might be found, for he knew that the aboriginals of such places can follow as blood-hounds do—but by sight, not scent, and in a manner that seems incredible to the European—any track they find, and follow it, too, over grass and rock, even up a tree; thus he knew that were his traces found, he would inevitably be tracked and discovered, wherever he went.

So the long hours of the night went slowly past, and he longed, as a change or relief, for morning. "Poor fools that we are!" says a writer; "our hours are in time so few, and yet we forever wish them shorter, and fling them, scarcely used, behind us roughly, as a child flings his broken toys."

At last exhaustion of the mind and body brought blessed sleep, and on the dewy earth, under the shelter of some black and silver mimosa trees, he slumbered heavily till the noon of the next day was well advanced, and the sun shone in the unclouded sky.

He had a dream of the now defunct cottage at Finglecombe, as it existed when he was wont to play by his mother's knee, or watch with childish wonder his silent father, a moody and discontented man. He started and awoke, recalling an old Devonshire superstition, that to have a dream of one's childhood, when in maturity, was a sure sign that something was about to happen.

"Oh, what may that something be!" was his first despairing, rather than hopeful, mental thought, and with it came a terror of what the long and solitary hunger-stricken day might bring forth.