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."
* * * * *