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.

But he was not left long in doubt. There came distinctly to his ear the familiar sound of an anchor being let go, and the rush of a chain-cable through a hawse-hole, followed by the blowing-off of steam!

A sudden revulsion of thought from despair to keenest joy--a gush of prayer and gratitude to God filled his heart, and a shout escaped his lips--help, succour, escape, were all at hand, and already--already!

Forgetful, oblivious of what savages might be near or might see him, he started to an eminence close by, and saw in the bay, the very place occupied but yesterday morning--a time that seemed ages upon ages ago--by the _Amethyst_, a stately steam corvette, riding at anchor, and all her snow-white canvas being handed with man-o'-war celerity.

She had no ensign flying, but to Derval's experienced eye, it was evident that she was a British ship. If any of the natives saw her, as there was every reason to suppose they did, the terrible lesson taught them by the guns and small-arms of the _Amethyst_, made them conceal themselves, for nothing was seen of them when Derval rushed to the beach, and, without attempting to make a signal or waiting for a boat, and heedless or unthinking of whether there might be sharks in the water, plunged into the waves that rippled on the rocks, and swam off at once, through the debris of battered canoes and dead bodies that were still floating about.

"Man overboard--a rope--a rope--stand by!" he heard voices shouting as he cleft the water and neared her fast, for he was a powerful and skilful swimmer, and after a few minutes he found himself, panting, breathless, and faint with excitement, past anxiety and present joy, safe upon the deck of the ship-of-war, where he was of course, supposed by all to be a ship-wrecked man--the last survivor of some unfortunate crew--and found himself overwhelmed with questions.

But none of these could he answer with coherence, until he was taken into the cabin of the captain, who at once ordered him wine and other refreshments. He then told his story, which elicited considerable commiseration, and much more indignation at the foul treachery of which his messmate had been guilty.

He now found that he was on board H.M. corvette _Holyrood_, of 16 guns, an iron ship, cased with wood, of 5,000 horse-power, commanded by Captain ---- who came into these seas with orders to look after any survivors of wrecks, and who had been last at the Crozet Islands, that wild and mountainous group which lies in south latitude 47 and east longitude 46, and the peaks of which, high as Ben Nevis, are covered with eternal snow. He had visited Turtle Island for the same purpose, and meant now to haul up for England, _viâ_ the Cape, St. Helena, and Ascension.

But for the circumstance of this ship's fortuitous visit, it is not difficult to speculate upon what must eventually have been the awful fate of Derval Hampton!

The latter now found himself recognised by the third lieutenant of the _Holyrood_, who had belonged to the _President_ training ship, and astonished the rescued man by accosting him by name, and they shook hands quite as old friends.

Finding that Derval was a gentleman by education and bearing, and an officer of the Royal Naval Reserve, whose name as such was in the _Navy List_, the officers of the gun-room at once requested that he would mess with them during the passage home, or till he made some other arrangement.

What other arrangement could he make, but rejoin his ship? and that, as yet, was impossible.

The homeward voyage was a very protracted one, and for several reasons the _Holyrood_ was long detained at the Cape by the Commodore commanding our squadron there.

It was when lying in Table Bay that Derval read in an old number of the _Times_, that Lord Oakhampton, his meeting with whom he had well-nigh forgotten amid more exciting events, had returned home from Bermuda. Then he thought of Clara, and wondered if the little maid, with the rosebud mouth she had given him so frankly to kiss, remembered the young sailor to whom she owed her life in the Summer Isles.

The paragraph announcing that Lord Oakhampton had resigned his governorship, concluded by stating that strange rumours were abroad, to the effect that his Lordship's return was connected with a new and unexpected claimant to his title and estates, whose pretensions thereto would soon be a knotty matter for a committee of privileges.

Derval read all this with singular indifference. So keen was his disgust of his own family, that he cared little whether his father succeeded in his claim or not. One fact he felt assured of, that it would avail him--Derval--nothing to communicate to him the cruel treachery of which his step-mother, and her kinsman, had made his eldest son their victim. She would simply deny it, and the breach made wide enough now by coldness and indifference, would become more so by solid mistrust and dislike.

Thus he resolved to go no more near his home, and hence the long ignorance of all there as to his movements, and even of his existence.

When the _Amethyst_ returned home, and Derval stepped on board of her in the London docks, old Joe Grummet, who was smoking his pipe in the gangway, thought he saw a ghost, and uttered a roar of absolute terror! Most extravagant was the joy of the worthy old salt on being assured of Derval's identity.

"Of all my yarns, this beats them--beats old Boots!" he exclaimed, as he drew a match across the sole of his shoe and relighted his pipe.

"Where is the Captain, Joe?" asked Derval.

"Captain 's in the cabin."

The unexpected visitor descended at once.

"Just come on board, sir!" said he, reporting himself with comic coolness and gravity.

"Good heavens--can it be--Derval--Derval Hampton!" exclaimed Captain Talbot, springing up from his writing-desk, and scattering his letters over the deck, and he took both Derval's hands in his own, shook them heartily, and mutual explanations at once ensued.

After rejoining the _Amethyst_, Derval made many voyages with her, and thus four years and more passed on, till, seeing an account of his father's death in a paper some weeks old, a great revulsion of feeling came over him, with much of repentance for the mutual indifference in which he had indulged; and a species of craving came over him to see the home of his childhood, or rather the place thereof, once again, for his father lay there in the great granite mausoleum, and his mother near the yew of other years, in the old church-yard--the true "God's acre" of Finglecombe; and he longed, too, to see old Patty Fripp.

As for his father, his old face came back to memory, as he remembered it in the days of his infancy, out of the long dim vista of the vanished years; and so for a time his whole heart went forth to his father--the father that loved his mother, and her memory so, before that other came!

Derval was now first mate of the _Amethyst_, Tom Tyeblock having got a ship of his own. He was moreover a sub-lieutenant of the Royal Naval Reserve, had done his gunnery drill again and again on board the training-ship, drawing the pay of his rank, and messing in the gun-room.

Of course he still connected all that had befallen him on Turtle Island, with Mrs. Hampton and her letter to the late Mr. Reeve Rudderhead; thus, after taking the train to Finglecombe, on reaching that place no power could make him take up his abode underneath the roof of his half-brother and Mrs. Hampton. So he took rooms at the hotel, the "Hampton Arms" (the armorial three choughs), where Rookleigh visited him promptly enough; but the meeting between those two who shared the same blood, was a strange and unnatural one, after their long separation, though Derval's heart warmed to Rookleigh, and was more stirred than vanity would have permitted him to own.

"What will people think," said Rookleigh, "of your being here at an hotel, and not at home?"

"Home!" exclaimed Derval, with a bitter laugh.

"Yes--it is home."

"Yours--not mine; and as to 'the people,' they may think precisely what they please, my dear Rookleigh."

"And what shall I tell mother is your reason?" asked Rookleigh, who, to do him justice, was ignorant of much that Derval knew.

"Say it is my desire that she should forget her dear and amiable cousin, Reeve Rudderhead, and all connected with him, especially their _epistolary correspondence_," was the--to Rookleigh--enigmatical, yet bitter reply of Derval.

Save the surrounding hills and woods, he found all the once secluded localities of his childhood so changed by the erection of marine villas, terraces, and formal promenades, that he would soon--in disgust--have gone back to London, but for certain influences that came to bear upon his actions.

Derval fell in love!