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."