CHAPTER III.

ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP "AMETHYST."

At last there comes a crisis in the affairs of Derval Hampton.

"How often am I to urge that this boy of yours should be sent to a boarding school or--to sea, dearest Greville," he heard his step-mother say decisively, but in a suave manner she was cunning enough to adopt with his father, when she had some important end in view, just as he took his seat at a side-table for breakfast to which he had been permanently banished, while little Rookleigh perched in a baby-chair (held in by a cross-bar) sat by his mamma's side and got tiny bits of the best of everything from her own hands.

As her husband made no immediate reply, but sat immersed in the "money article" of the _Times_, she repeated her observation or suggestion in a louder key, when he said,

"Why, Anne?"

"Because I cannot have him at home here any longer, and what is more, dear Greville, I shall not!"

"You will not?" said he, laying down his paper, while Derval listened with a quick-beating heart.

"Once and for all--no."

"I ask again, why?"

"He is so unfinished--worse--unmannerly--a mere Devonshire lout, I am sorry to say, and will corrupt my darling little Rookleigh if they grow up together."

"Say _ours_, Anne."

"Well, ours, of course, darling."

"I cannot see that poor Derval is all you say."

"But I do, and to sea let him go; we can't have him growing up to manhood an idle, hulking fellow here."

"Everyone thinks Derval a very well-bred boy, and Mr. Asperges says he is the best behaved of all his choir."

"He poodled the cat, however, steals the fruit and the jam, and is so full of tricks and strange eccentric ways, that he should be permanently banished to the kitchen," continued Mrs. Hampton, forgetting her suavity and warming up with her subject; "but here is the very thing we want!" she exclaimed, turning to an advertisement in the _Times_, as if her eye had only caught it for the first time.

"_The Sea_.--Introduction given--free of all charge--to one of the oldest ship-owning firms in the city requiring respectable youths on board of three splendid ships just launched, for the West Indian and Colonial trades. Midshipman's uniform worn. Apply, Dugald Curry & Co," &c. "I think you should lose no time in writing, love," she added coaxingly.

"Would you like this, Derval?" asked Greville Hampton, with a little softer cadence in his voice than usual.

Of course he liked it; and a great flush of happiness and longing rose up in his heart, the ideas of the "splendid ship" and "middy's uniform," combined with a young Briton's in-born tastes and visions of the sea--the sea, with its perils, glories, and wonders; of Robinson Crusoe, and lonely isles full of fruits and flowers and coral caves, of gold to find and savages to fight--now filled the whole mind of Derval; and all that the lives of adventurous voyagers and intrepid seamen--all that the stories contained in naval history and the novels of Marryat and others have sown in the souls of our schoolboys, were there to rouse his native enthusiasm.

So the matter was soon accomplished, and a correspondence with Messrs. Dugald Curry & Co. ended in Derval finding himself elected to seek his bread upon the waters as middy on board the good ship _Amethyst_ of London, 700 tons register, Captain Philip Talbot commander, bound for Rio Janeiro.

From this we may fully gather that the once tender husband that loved so well the gentle Mary, and whose whole thought was the future welfare of their only child, was a sorely changed man now, under the influence of another woman and his new surroundings.

With the removal of the picturesque little cottage of Finglecombe and the erection of a florid and pretentious villa in its place, the old life had passed away, and with it many a memory of the innocent and loving, if anxious, past. Greville Hampton had become almost callous in his worldliness; a slave to chance impulses, to gratified avarice, to feverish acquisitiveness, and the love that had whilom been absorbed by the son of Mary, was now shared, and more than shared, yea, usurped, by the younger born of Anne Rookleigh.

Derval, whom he was sending forth into the cold and bitter world so early in life, in his tender years, as a poor sailor boy, was the same son for whom, in the days of his more limited means, he had longed for wealth, and now--now when wealth was coming upon him--he could look on Anne's face, and into her false eyes of golden hazel, and thrust back the thoughts that at times reproached him.

Could it really be that he--Greville Hampton--was doing this without a necessity therefor? But true it is, that "one's memory is apt to grow rusty with respect to one's old self, and we nearly always look upon ourselves as the products of certain causes, setting down anything unsatisfactory to the charge of training and circumstances." Yet, as in every parting there is an image of death, in the departure of Derval it seemed for a time to Greville Hampton as if Mary was dying again.

The day before he was to leave, Derval went alone to her grave, to read again the words--how well he knew them!--on the little cross at the head of the dear mound, and to take farewell of her, as it were--that turfy mound, to him the most hallowed spot on earth, yea, hallowed as that on which the Angel of God once alighted; and waves of feeling seemed to swell painfully up in his little heart as he turned slowly to leave the spot, for years--perhaps for ever.

Often in the lonely watches of the night, under the glory of the southern skies, or in dark and stormy hours, when the bleak wind blustered aloft and bellied out the close-reefed topsails, when giant waves came thundering from windward to wash the deck and gorge the lee-scuppers, making the stout ship reel like a toy in the perilous trough of the sea, did the sailor boy's thoughts fly back to that peaceful grave and his farewell visit there.

And now the last night came that Derval was to spend under the roof of his father, and for a time the heart of the latter really did go forth to him; the present wife was almost forgotten; dead Mary came back to his soul, and seemed to take her place again. Fain would he have gone with his boy to London, to have seen him off, or into safe hands on board his future home; but Mrs. Hampton said no--she could not and would not be left alone just then.

How tenderly old Patty wept over her "darling's things," and folded them carefully and neatly for the last time, and packed his little portmanteau, yearningly as his own mother would have done, and thought truly, with a great sob, that had she lived he would not now have been "going into the world as a sailor boy." And for that dead mother's sake she kissed him many times, and with her old scissors snipped off a lock of his once golden curls, that were gradually turning to rich dark brown like his father's; but Derval had the crisp hair that indicates character, firmness, and decision of purpose. As he was to depart in the early morning, he kissed and hung over his brother, "little Rook," as he called him, whom he was not permitted to waken; and the episode of the lonely boy doing this moved the heart of his father; but Mrs. Hampton looked coldly on, for hers was hard as flint to him and cold as iron.

At last it was all over, and in the early hours of the next morning he found himself, as one in a dream, in the train for London, and leaving fast behind every feature of the landscape with which he had been familiar from infancy. Already Finglecombe, with all its groves and little church tower had vanished, and now Bideford, with its wide and airy streets that shelve towards the water, came and went as the train swept on, and after that, all his wistful eyes looked on was new to him.

It was an inauspicious morning on which to begin the world, being a dull and raw one in February; the rain fell aslant the grey sky, and reedy fens and lonesome marshes, where the bittern boomed, were full of water, and the rooks were cawing in the leafless elms as they built their nests. The orchards were leafless, and the furrows in the ploughed fields were like long narrow runnels filled with water; but despite all this, the novelty of Derval's situation, a certain sense of freedom, and being the lord of his own proper person, kept up his spirits for a time.

The last hand in which his hand had lingered was that of Mr. Asperges Laud, and in fancy he seemed still to see his kind and earnest face, his Roman collarino, broad hat, and long-skirted coat, as he stood on the platform and gave a farewell wave, like a wafted blessing, after the departing train.

The railway journey was precisely like any other; he saw many places new to him, Taunton, with all its pleasant villages and beautiful orchards, and Salisbury with its wonderful spire, among others, and after a run of two hundred and twenty miles his train ran clanking into Waterloo Station. After traversing miles of streets (which he thought would never come to an end), about ten at night, and with a heart beating almost painfully with excitement, young Derval found himself in the mighty wilderness of London, and surrounded by more people than he thought the world contained, and an appalling bustle, strange lights and sights and sounds, and where all men seemed to be engaged in a race with time and for bare existence.

By the guard who had him in charge he was taken to an hotel; excitement rendered him incapable of eating, and weary with intense thinking he went supperless to bed. Sooth to say, he felt very friendless and miserable. He dearly loved his father, despite his later abstraction and coldness, and already he was longing to see his face again, and the face, too, of Patty Fripp, who had been a mother to him. He had left home but that morning, and already ages seemed to have lapsed since then.

The thoughts of Robinson Crusoe, Captain Cook, Peter Simple, and so forth, failed now to keep up his spirits in the unutterable loneliness of his condition; already he wept for the home he had so lately quitted and loathed, and from which he had been literally driven; but he had no anger at any one there now--not even Mrs. Hampton; and folding his hands, he repeated the prayers, from which mockery was soon to make him refrain when on board the good ship _Amethyst_.

George Eliot says truly that "daylight changes the aspect of misery to us, as of everything else, for the night presses on our imagination--the forms it takes are false, fitful, exaggerated; in broad day it sickens our sense with the dreary persistence of measurable reality."

The day that dawned was scarcely one calculated to rouse the ardour or spirits even of a lad, as it was one of the Cimmerian darkness, a London fog, when the omnibuses ceased to ply, and not even the boldest cabby would undertake to convey Derval to the West India Docks, a state of things which greatly perplexed him, as the yellow opaqueness that now surrounded him was so different from the thin white mists that came at times from the Bristol Channel.

It was one of those horrible fogs peculiar to London and to London only, when there is a doubly blinding nature in it, which puts the thrust-down smoke into a state of atmospheric solution, obscuring all things, and causes the oppressed eyes to tingle, smart, and fill with irrepressible tears, and blinds them to the dim objects that might perchance otherwise be visible; that compels at midday, and often all day long, a vast consumption of candles and lamp oil, gas and torches, and nearly all locomotion is brought to a standstill; when the trees and railings become white as if snowed upon, carriages are relinquished and links and lanterns resorted to at the West End, and the street perils of the East are fearfully increased, and many a vehicle is found half-wrecked by the kerb-stone; and when the terrible poisonous smoke-fog in its descent from the very sky, as it were, penetrates houses, and makes dark and obscure, damp and comfortless, even the cosiest and brightest of rooms.

The mind is usually affected by external circumstances. Thus, never more than now in this dark and apparently awful day, did Derval, cowering in the corner of a coffee-room, sigh in heart for the touch of the loving hand and the sound of the caressing voice that the grave had closed over for ever.

At last, as evening drew near, the tiresome fog lifted a little, and a cab was brought for him. To Derval's timidly expressed "hope that he knew the way," the bloated visage of the Jehu of the "four-wheeler" responded by a smile of half amusement, half contempt; and to the inquiry if the fog was often like this, he was told that it was "ever so, from year's end to year's end."

After traversing a mighty labyrinth of streets, narrow, dirty, and of most repellent aspect, the cabman drew up, descended, and opened the door; though aware that he had to deal with "a precious green 'un," he was actually content with thrice his legal fare, and depositing Derval at a gate of the Dock--a wilderness of kegs, masts, and ships, and all manner of strange things to him--left him with his portmanteau to find out the _Amethyst_--his future home--as best he could.

By the assistance of a good-natured porter, after great delay and trouble, he found her, and by a gangway proceeded on board in the mist and damp, unnoticed and bewildered to whom to address himself.

A prodigious noise and bustle prevailed everywhere, but to Derval's excited imagination they seemed to culminate on board the _Amethyst_. Several black gaping hatches were open, and a mighty multitude of casks, boxes, bales, and filled sacks, were descending into them, by ropes and chain run through the blocks shipped on derricks (in spars supported by stays, and used for slinging up or lowering down goods), with a terrible creaking and rattling, amid much expenditure of breath in the way of "yo-heave-oing" by gangs of peculiarly dirty-looking fellows, with jersey-sleeves rolled up, and who looked like gipsies or vagrants, but were simply unwashed and unkempt dock-labourers and porters.

The deck and the entire ship seemed, to lad's unprofessional eyes, a mass of irremediable confusion. The former was encumbered with casks and cases, and the mud brought from the shore by the feet of dock-people and visitors had not added to its comfort or cleanness. Everybody seemed bustling about, with some distinct object in view; but Derval stood aside with his little portmanteau and a travelling-bag, pushed to and fro by every passer, lost, bewildered, and not unfrequently sworn at.

At last he took courage to address a young man, tall, surly, and saucy in aspect, who was smoking a short pipe, but who wore a naval cap, and though he had his shirt-sleeves rolled up as if he had been at work, seemed in some authority, for Derval heard him spoken of as the third mate, and he was greatly shocked to find such an official attired thus, while superintending cargo going into the open hold.

"Please, sir," said Derval, "I have come to join the ship as a midshipman--where shall I put these things of mine?"

"Don't chuck them down here, youngster, whatever you do," was the somewhat surly response, while he gave Derval a casual yet critical glance. "You are young--young--what the devil is your name?"

"Derval Hampton, sir."

"Oh, ah--yes," replied the other, touching the peak of his cap in mockery, and for a moment taking his short pipe from his mouth. "I am Paul Bitts, the third mate; we have been looking for you for ever so long; you'll excuse the ship not being decorated to receive you."

"Certainly, sir."

"That is very good of you. I hope you left your esteemed papa and mamma very well?"

"Very well, thank you."

"A very greenhorn, by Jove!" muttered this would-be witty young gentleman. "Is your wife coming to see you off? I hope not, as I can't stand women's tears--lovely woman in distress and all that sort of thing."

"Who's this?" asked a smart-looking seaman with a fringe of curly brown whiskers, and a good-natured face--a man about forty-five--as he came forward. The new-comer had the cut of a genuine seaman, and wore his clothes as no landsman could ever wear them. His trousers were loose and round at the feet but tight at the waist; he wore a well-varnished and low-crowned black hat, with a long blue ribbon hanging over the left eye, a black silk handkerchief peculiarly knotted round his bare brown throat, that had been tanned by the sun of many a land and sea; a jack-knife hanging by a lanyard thread was his only ornament, unless we except a clumsy gold ring, and he displayed a superabundance of check shirt. He had a wide step, a rolling gait, and half-open hands that seemed always ready to tally on to anything. "Who is this?' he repeated, eyeing Derval.

"A greenhorn--a land-crab--come with the owner's compliments," said Mr. Paul Bitts, bowing low ironically; "allow me to introduce Mr. Derval Hampton--Mr. Joe Grummet, our boatswain; Mr. Joe Grummet--Mr. Derval----"

"Stow that 'ere nonsense," said the other bluntly; "welcome aboard, my little lad, and if any man in the _Amethyst_ can make a sailor of you, I am he."

Then Joe Grummet shook Derval's hand very cordially indeed.

"Take him aft to the captain," said Mr. Bitts; "but before you go, youngster, hand over all the cakes and jam-pots the old woman at home gave you."

"I have none, and if I have, why should I give them to you?" asked Derval, beginning to resent the other's offensive tone.

"Because you might be a naughty boy and get so sea-sick--so hand them over, and I'll find fellows to eat them for you."

"I have none, I tell you," replied Derval, with sparkling eyes; "and who do you mean by the 'old woman'?"

"Your mother, of course."

"I have--none!" replied Derval, in a changed voice that Joe Grummet was not slow to detect, and taking up Derval's portmanteau and bag, he desired him to follow, whispering as they went:

"Look 'ee, Hampton lad, there isn't a saucier fellow in the ship than Paul Bitts, but he is senior to you, and you won't gain anything by running foul of his hawse, so give him a wide berth always."

And now, by a very handsome companion-way and mahogany stair, they descended to the cabin of the ship, which was plainly and neatly furnished, the chief features, to Derval's eyes, being a rack or two of arms and a brass tell-tale compass, that swung in the square skylight.

"Mr. Hampton--just come aboard, sir," said Joe Grummet, removing his hat; and Derval found himself kindly welcomed by Captain Talbot, a man about thirty, with a handsome open countenance, a bright cheerful expression, and a stout well-set figure, and his two other mates, Mr. Girtline and Mr. Tyeblock, who pressed him to join them in a glass of sherry and a biscuit, of which they were partaking before going on shore.

Captain Talbot questioned him kindly about his parents and home as if to acquire his confidence and inspire him therewith; about his education, and if he had a genuine liking for the sea, or if it was only a flight of boyish fancy born of story books; but Derval, unable to tell that anywhere was better than home to him, answered with great reserve and much shyness, while sooth to say, as he had never heard of the Royal Naval Reserve, to which Captain Talbot and his two mates belonged, their costumes puzzled him very much.

They wore gold epaulettes, and half-inch gold lace in wavy lines around the cuffs, laced trousers, sword and belts like naval officers, Captain Talbot having two medals glittering on his broad chest for saving human life; and he and his two mates were now departing in "full fig," as Joe Grummet informed him, to a great entertainment given by the Lord Mayor, and ere they left the ship, the captain, who knew probably the proclivities of Mr. Paul Bitts, who was left in charge there, specially directed the boatswain to have an eye to the comforts of the new-comer.

So while showing him his berth and where to stow his things, Joe solved to him the mystery of the handsome uniforms, and fired his enthusiasm thereby. He told him that no less a personage than the Prince of Wales was at the head of the Royal Naval Reserve; that Captain Talbot had the rank of Lieutenant there, and Mr. Girtline and Mr. Tyeblock that of sub-lieutenants among the officers, who among their number included several marquises and lords, as the _Navy List_ showed; and that in consequence of the _Amethyst_ having among her crew, which consisted of twenty-five all told (exclusive of officers), ten seamen of the Royal Naval Reserve (of whom he, Joe, was one), she was entitled to carry at her gaff-peak, the blue ensign of Her Majesty's fleet, prior to first hoisting of which, she was duly provided with an Admiralty warrant.

The uniform which he had now unpacked and the contemplation of six brass 9-pounders on deck, polished like jeweller's gold, with black tompions in their muzzles and canvas-covered lashings white as snow, afforded Derval as much delight as the rifles with sword-bayonets, the cutlasses and pistols that were racked round the mizenmast in the cabin and against the rudder case; for in the seas the _Amethyst_ might have to traverse, were risks to be run that rendered lethal weapons necessary at times; and he longed, with all an enthusiastic lad's longing, for the day when he, like Joe Grummet and the rest, would be qualified to have his turn of drill and gunnery practice on board H.M.S. _President_ in the West India Docks. And he hoped too, that in time to come he might be captain of just such another fine and stately ship as the _Amethyst_ of 700 tons register, A.1 at Lloyds, perfect in the grace of her rigging, beautiful in mould, and made for fast sailing--for slipping through the sea "a-head of her reckoning."

Her rigging was beautifully fitted, every rope lying in the chafe of another, her decks were flush and level, and when at sea any loose rope was neatly coiled away and laid down in a regular man-of-war fashion that came of the recent training of Joe Grummet and others on board H.M.S. _President_.

"The skipper has specially requested me to take you in tow, Mr. Hampton," said the boatswain.

"In tow?" queried Derval.

"In charge, don't you know; so there is one piece of advice I'll give you, keep to windward if you can of Mr. Paul Bitts; he is often crank, and over-fond of colting the youngster, and who yaws a bit in way of doing duty."

To this mysteriously worded advice, Derval replied that he should endeavour to please that gentleman in all things.

"The captain, of course, will take care that you are not put upon, but then he is not always at hand. He is a fine fellow, Phil Talbot, who can crack his joke and his biscuit on the same head," continued the boatswain manipulating a quid between the hard palms of his hands prior to inserting it in the back recesses of his mouth. "Many a lunar he and I have worked together when mere ship-boys long ago--for there wer'nt no middies--no reefers--in the merchant service in those days, and many who sailed with us then have gone aloft for ever. But come lad--supper waits," he exclaimed as a bell was heard to jingle; "a jolly British leg of mutton with caper sauce--gad boy, I have eaten capers off the bushes many a time on the shore of the Black Sea."

At supper were Dr. Strang, the young Scotch surgeon, who in despair of a practice ashore was fain to ship as a "medico" in the _Amethyst_; and two middies, Harry or Hal Bowline, a frank fair-haired and cherry-cheeked young fellow with a confident and often defiant air; and little Tommy Titford,--usually called Tom Tit--a quiet, dark-eyed, and gentle lad about Derval's age, and who was the peculiar object of the malevolence of Mr. Paul Bitts, then busily engaged in slicing down the mutton, of which he reserved all the best cuts for himself.

He gruffly told Derval to make haste and finish his supper, as he had a message for him to execute; and Derval, anxious to make himself useful, and also to conciliate this personage, bolted his food, and nearly choked himself with a can of ale handed to him by the good-natured boatswain.

"Got any sisters, Hampton?" asked Bowline, who thought himself a wag.

"No," replied Derval.

"Sorry for that; because we would have stuck their photos all over the place, and set them up to auction now and then."

"Your message, please sir?" said Derval.

"The harbour watch is set, so go forward and send the cook's shifter to me."

"Where shall I find him?"

"In the starboard binnacle."

"Very good, sir." And Derval vanished.

"He is as big a gull as ever picked up a bit of biscuit!" said Bitts with a horse-laugh in which the others joined, especially young Bowline, and after some time Derval returned looking rather tired, flushed, and confused, to say he had been all over the ship, inquired of everyone, and could find neither the person nor the place referred to, at which there was a fresh burst of laughter; for by some he had been informed that the cook's shifter had gone on shore to be married, by others that he was busy polishing the chain cable, and that the starboard binnacle was at present in the captain's hat-box, and so forth.

Many similar, and many silly jokes against which the boatswain failed to protect him, and perhaps was not disinclined to join in, were perpetrated on Derval, ere, thoroughly weary with a long and, to him, exciting day, he retired to his berth, which he thought had a moist and musty odour, and certainly its sheets had not the dried lavender and camphor scents of Patty Fripp's store presses at Finglecombe.

Betimes came the morrow with its troubles, and the tyranny of Mr. Bitts among them.

"Come youngster, tumble up," shouted that individual, "it is six bells."

"What have bells to do with me, sir?" asked Derval timidly.

"By Jingo, I'll soon let you know, through the medium of a good colt. Rouse--that is all!"

Now that gentleman was in charge of the deck, and when Derval came upon it, at 6 A.M., Bitts was again in his shirt-sleeves, and still superintending the stowage of cargo, swearing at the dock labourers, until the appearance of Derval gave a turn to his thoughts.

"On deck at last, Hampton. By Jove, you look as if you had been cooked and stewed up again!" he exclaimed; "now, away aloft and get the fresh air about you. The sooner you learn to sit astride the main cross-trees, the better for yourself."

And to Derval's dismay the speaker indicated two little spars, that looked as slender as walking-canes, resting on the trestle-trees, where the topmast and topgallantmast are connected.

"Please, sir, I cannot do that just yet," urged Derval, turning very white.

"Into the maintop then," continued the bully; "away aloft youngster, and hold on with your eyelids if your hands fail you. By Jove, you'll soon find that you are like a young bear, with all your sorrows to come! Here you, Tom Tit, show this son of a shotten herring how to mount the rigging."

In obedience to these orders the boys began to ascend the main rattlins at once, little Titford leading the way and saying many pleasant things to give Derval courage and confidence.

"Not through the lubber's hole," shouted Paul Bitts; "up by the futtock shrouds!"

Derval knew well that the sooner he mastered all this kind of work the better for himself. He had climbed many a tall elm when seeking rooks' eggs at Finglecombe, and many a taller cliff when after those of the cormorants, choughs, and gannets; but this was very different work, even though the ship, moored beside the quay, was motionless as St. Pauls; and he thought of what this task would be at sea, in a storm perhaps, when the ship became the fulcrum of the swaying masts, and his heart stood still at the terrible anticipation; yet he mounted bravely up, step for step with young Titford, encouraged by the latter's voice, and the clapping of hard horny palms below.

But now they had reached the top of the long shrouds, to where the futtock-shrouds come down from the top and are bound to the mast by a hoop of iron.

"Up you go now--if you go through the lubber's hole, I'll be the death of you!" cried Bitts from below, for as the captain and other two mates were still on shore, he was in all the plenitude of his power.

"Hold on fast and follow me," cried little Titford, and active as a squirrel, with his body bent backward at an angle of forty-five from the mast, he continued mounting until he found himself in the maintop--_i.e._ the platform placed over the head of the lower must.

Panting, and perspiring at every pore, with agitation, exertion, and an emotion of no small dismay to see the deck and the men thereon seem so small and so far down below, Derval, with tingling fingers, while a prayer rose to his lips, grasped the futtock-shrouds, surmounted them as one in a dream, and found himself safe beside Titford. There came a time when this task was as easy to him as sitting down to table, but the novelty of it filled him with great alarm then, and when the descent began, despite his terror of Mr. Paul Bitts, he deliberately left the top through the lubber's hole--an aperture in the top grating--as an easier mode of progression while Titford went down by the futtock-shrouds.

On seeing this Paul Bitts grinned with delight, and produced from his pocket a colt--a piece of rope eighteen inches long, knotted at one end and whipped at the other--which he was wont to carry for the benefit of the ship-boys.

Derval perceived this; a spirit of mischief, caused by revulsion of feeling, rose within him, and the moment he reached the deck, all encumbered as it was by boxes, barrels, bales, and gangways, dock labourers and porters, he gave Mr. Bitts a chase that excited the laughter of all and roused the fury of that personage, by darting hither and thither, with all a boy's agility, round the masts and hatchways till he reached the quarter-deck, at a part of which the side-netting was being repaired; consequently a portion of it was open and the moulded plankshere (a plank which runs all round the timber heads) was hinged up.

While Derval stood here irresolute, and thinking of capitulation, Bitts made a dart at him, on which the latter instantly shrank aside, and his tormentor, in his blind fury failing to perceive the gap in the bulwark, went head foremost overboard and into the water.

Amid shouts of laughter he came to the surface, black as a negro, with the filthy mud and ooze of the harbour bottom, into which he must have been wedged to the shoulders.

"Oh, my eye!" shouted Harry Bowline, who danced a few steps of a hornpipe, "here's a lark--Bitts in the water--man overboard--rope, rope! cut away the life-buoy--man a boat!"

Puffing like a grampus and half choked, the third mate scrambled on board by the mizen chains, minus his colt, and rather more than crestfallen, and while he went below to alter his costume, Derval, after paying his "footing" to the crew--their perquisites for his first going aloft--was sent into a part of the hold where a gang of men were stowing away cases, and where, as it was very dark, his duty consisted in holding a candle to show a light when required.

In an atmosphere and amid features and occupations so new and strange, perhaps Derval thought as little now of the Oakhampton title, the ruined castle, and Wistmanswood, as his father did amid his fast growing wealth; but the time might come for both to lay such matters to heart, and this the future will show.

It was somewhat of a red-letter day for Derval when he first donned his uniform--a gold-laced cap and blue Oxford jacket with gilt anchor buttons, gold anchors on the collars, and ditto lace upon the cuffs--and went on shore, bearer of a letter to Messrs. Dugald Curry & Co., and feeling indifferent to the anxious inquiries of Mr. Bitts, as to whether he thought he resembled Lord Nelson, K.C.B., whether his mamma knew he was absent from home, and at what church he was to meet his intended, and much more to the same purpose.

In time the cargo was all on board, the hatches battened down, the boats secured and inspected, the bills of lading signed--documents whereby the captain of a vessel acknowledges receipt of goods shipped on board, and binds himself ("dangers of accidents, the seas, fire, enemies, &c., excepted") to deliver them in good order to those to whom they are addressed, on payment of the stipulated freight.

The _Amethyst_ was hauled out of dock, and with the blue ensign of the Royal Naval Reserve flying at her gaff-peak, and Blue Peter at the foremast-head, was taken by tug down the river, and came to anchor off Tilbury Fort. Next day began the bustle of preparing for sea; the canvas was fully bent, the royal yards crossed, the studding sail gear rove, the powder brought on board; and in many ways Derval made himself so active, even up aloft, that he quite won the heart of Joe Grummet.

"I knew you would drop into your place in a day or two, youngster," said he, "and you've already done it."

"When shall we reach the ocean?"

"Oh, very soon--a deuced deal too soon for you," said Mr. Bitts.

"To-morrow a tug will take us to the Nore, and next day will find us in the Channel--and here comes old Toggle the Pilot," said Grummet, as a stout personage, enveloped in many coats and wraps, came tumbling over the side, with a rubicund and weatherbeaten face, and made his way direct for the grog, which as a preliminary to everything, waited him, as he knew, in the cabin.

It is not an uncommon thing for the captain of a sea-going ship, calling the roll, to find several of his men absent, having been either too intoxicated to sail, or having broken their articles and disappeared, and such deficiencies are then made up by the crimps at Gravesend, as no vessel can go to sea short-handed; but this was never the case with Phil Talbot, who was one of the most popular merchant commanders belonging to the mighty Port of London.

Ere long the Nore was left behind, and Derval had his first instalment of the odious mal-du-mer amid the heavy seas of the English Channel, and with a longing and somewhat of an envious heart, he saw old Toggle the Pilot quit the ship and go off to Deal in his boat, waving a farewell with his tarpaulin hat--the last link with old England.

Even the glorious sea is becoming somewhat prosaic now in these our days of steam, telegraphy, and extreme colonisation; yet it was the fortune of Derval Hampton to see much that was stirring, perilous and even terrible, ere he had the down of manhood on his upper lip.

The family at Finglecombe knew that the _Amethyst_, had sailed for Rio de Janeiro. Greville Hampton, who was neither destitute of humanity nor of natural interest in his first-born, duly announced the fact, as seen among the "Shipping Intelligence" in his morning paper, and it set Mrs. Hampton thinking--thinking--as she fondled her rather cross-tempered little Rookleigh.

She thought on the contingencies consequent to a sailor's life, separated from death by a six-inch plank, as Juvenal has it--an idea reproduced by Dr. Samuel Johnson--the collisions, fires, founderings, the chances of lee-shores, of floating hulls and icebergs in the dark; the countless chances too of drowning or dying by climate and disease. She had read too in the papers that "in the five years ending June last, 5,028 ships had gone to the bottom with every man on board, making 6,469 souls," and she thought there were a good many chances against Derval Hampton--the eldest born--ever darkening his father's door again.

But there was one chance, or mischance rather, on which she had not calculated, and which startled the soul of Greville to its inmost depth, when he read on another morning a paragraph worded thus:--

"The ship _Amethyst_ of London, outward bound, spoken with in Latitude 13° 17' S. and Longitude 33° 27' W., by Curry & Co.'s ship _Wanderer_, all well, save that a death had happened. A boy had fallen from aloft and perished."

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