UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS.
The voyage of the _Amethyst_ towards tropical seas and shores was far
from monotonous, and more than one startling event occurred during
its progress. With her snowy canvas spread, her rigging all a-taut
(to use a cant nautical phrase), and her deck, whilom so wet,
slippery, and foul in dock, well holystoned and swabbed till it
was--as Joe Grummet said--white as a lady's hand, the _Amethyst_ was
in all her beauty now--all the more so to Derval, who got rid of his
sea-sickness ere she cleared the Channel.
"Well, my little man," said Captain Talbot one day, when Joe Grummet
was teaching him the use of the quadrant, "how do you feel on your
sea legs--eh?"
"Happy, sir--very happy," replied Derval, turning his bright young
face, which was flushed by the keen breeze, laden by the iodine of
many thousand miles of the fresh, glorious, and open ocean.
"That's right, my lad."
"I have not been so happy for many a year past," said Derval,
thinking, perhaps, of his mother.
"Come, come, youngster, it is rather early in life for you to talk of
many years, and of happiness in the past tense," said the Captain,
amused by a quaintness in the manner of Derval--a manner born of the
kind of isolation in which he had lived in his father's house; and
save for the annoyance occasionally given to him by the wasp-like
nature of Paul Bitts, he would have had nothing to complain of, for
the good example and gentlemanly bearing of Captain Talbot and the
first and second mates, affected all the ship's company
advantageously.
As for the self-won ducking in the West India Dock, Derval hoped Mr.
Bitts would forget that and get over it in time; but he never did,
and in many ways pursued the feud which he had declared, apparently,
on the day Derval first joined the ship.
One morning, when he and Derval were in the middle watch (_i.e._ from
12 to 4 A.M., as the ship was nearing the Azores), the latter,
overcome by the heavy saline atmosphere of the sea, by youth and the
lateness of the hour, began insensibly to doze, with his head resting
on the gunnel of the quarter-deck, and in a kind of half-waking dream
he thought himself at Finglecombe: young rabbits scudded past in the
grass; the hum of the wind in the rigging aloft, suggested that of
bees and insects in the sunshine, and the air seemed to become laden
with the familiar fragrance of the apple orchards and garden flowers,
till a heavy thwack from the new colt of the inevitable Mr. Paul
Bitts awoke him with a nervous start.
"Sleeping are you--on your watch, too! You'll come to the gallows,
you young villain!" exclaimed his senior officer, with a malicious
gleam in his closely set and serpent-like eyes; "that will teach you
to snore like one of Circe's swine. Now go to windward--keep a
bright look-out for the revolving light on Cape Flyaway, and if you
see the great sea-serpent, don't forget to call the morning watch."
And, with a chuckle, he coiled away the colt in a pocket of his
pea-jacket.
"Keep your weather-eye open," he added in a bullying tone; "and don't
let me catch you, in the dark, stealing eggs out of the hen-coops!"
"Please, sir," said Derval, rubbing his shoulders, "I never was a
thief."
"But thieving begins sometimes, and opportunity is the devil's game."
Under the special tutelage of Joe Grummet, who conceived a great
regard for him, Derval, in conjunction with little Tom Titford,
learned to hand, reef and steer, to mount away aloft with ease and
confidence, and with both to lie out on the arms of a topgallant
yard; to use the marling-spike, to splice and knot, and make a
grummet. He knew the name of every part of the ship, of every spar
and of all the standing and running rigging; for he had great
aptitude, and proved a smart scholar at this kind of work; thus, in a
little time, it was evident that he would be able to take sights,
work a reckoning by log and compass, and calculate variation and
leeway. He was taught how to be ready for any emergency of wind or
weather; to consider nothing too trivial for consideration, and to
remember, as Joe said, "how a little leak may sink a great ship."
Yet his sweet boyish nature still remained; and now, when far away at
sea, he thought, in the warmth of his affection, of the handsome pipe
he would "bring home for papa"; of the beautiful shells for his
little half-brother; and he had visions, too, of a wonderful cap, all
over ribbons, for old Patty Fripp.
Overhead the sky was now of the cerulean blue that England never
knew, and never will know.
Captain Talbot made his men strictly observe the "clean-shirt-days,"
as the sailors call Thursday and Sunday; on the latter he always read
prayers at the capstan-head to his crew, who were sure to be neatly
dressed, and there was much of that silence which prevails in a
man-of-war on that day.
On one of these occasions, just after prayers, Mr. Bitts, to Derval's
great surprise, approached under the lee of the long-boat, amidship,
and said, "Come, youngster--here is a glass of grog for you--just a
thimble-full; the sun is over the fore-yard long ago."
Derval shrank from the beverage, which was proffered in a tumbler,
but seeing Mr. Bitts' hand in his pocket wherein the colt was coiled,
he drank it off, though nearly choked by the effort, and after that,
his perceptions of everything were very vague indeed.
The ship seemed to be sailing round and round upon an axis; he tried
to speak, but the difficulty of articulation became great, and the
half-uttered nonsense he talked hung upon his lips; he felt
alternately maudlin and defiant, especially with young Harry Bowline,
who greeted him with shouts of laughter, yet good-naturedly
endeavoured to get him below, and a struggle ensued between them.
"What is the matter there, forward?" cried the Captain, in surprise,
from the quarterdeck.
"Mr. Hampton taken suddenly ill, sir," replied Mr. Bitts with a
gratified grin.
"Strang, see what is the matter."
The young Scots doctor went amidships, and returned laughing, to
report that which was really the case, "Young Hampton as screwed as
an owl!"
"The deuce he is!" exclaimed the Captain with great annoyance; "how
came this to pass?"
"The grog as Mr. Bitts gave him has been too strong for him, sir,"
said Joe Grummet, who took in the whole situation and resented it
accordingly; "riglar thumb-grog it must have been, to my mind."
Bitts furtively darted a vicious glance at the boatswain, who
received it with perfect equanimity.
"What can that boy know about grog?" said the Captain angrily.
"How to get jolly drunk on it apparently," replied the unabashed Paul
Bitts; "he is rather a greenhorn yet."
"Shame on you, sir! this is your fault, not his; and mark me, if it
ever happens again, it will be the worse for you and your
certificate!"
With this threat, the Captain turned and walked aft.
It may be safely recorded that this never happened again, and Derval,
full of shame for the occurrence, did all in his power, by proper and
zealous behaviour, to wipe off the stain, for such he deemed it,
brought upon him by the malevolence of the third mate.
On the watch by night, under skies where new constellations--new to
his eyes at least--were studding heaven, he always felt to the full
the awful impressiveness, the utter silence of the sea! Then his
thoughts fled home--to that which had latterly been no home to
him--and again, in fancy, he saw the lovely dell of Finglecombe, the
bay glittering in the sunny distance, the grim rocky portal of the
Horses' Hole, the Pixies Parlour, the stately ruins of Oakhampton,
the lone waste of Wistmanswood, the cob-cottages, and the old haunted
mill at the Mill brook, with its silent and mossy wheel.
What a vast time seemed to have elapsed since he left all these
behind him!
One day, when the _Amethyst_ was near the tropic of Cancer, and
ploughing the Sargasso Sea, about daybreak, Tom Tyeblock, the second
mate, who had the morning watch, reported a sail, with a signal
flying on the lee-bow, so the _Amethyst_ was edged down towards her.
She was a large brig, with her sails in considerable disorder. The
peak halyards of the spanker gaff had given way, and the sail lay
flapping against the mainmast; her spars were topped about in various
ways; the maintopsail was full, but the foretopsail lay in the wind;
not a soul was to be seen on board, and yet she had signals flying,
that said, "Can you send a boat on board?"
When near her, the _Amethyst_ lay to, and Captain Talbot ordered Mr.
Bitts to take a brace of revolvers with him and go off to the
stranger, with Derval and six men, who hazarded all manner of
conjectures as to the vessel.
Had her crew all perished of some terrible disease, or been poisoned
by a rascally black cook? If so, terrible sights would await them,
of corpses lying about, or festering in bunks and berths. Had there
been a mutiny, and had she been scuttled, to sink in time? She did
look rather deep in the water, Paul Bitts remarked, adding that she
might sink suddenly when they were on board, or alongside, and so
carry them down in the vortex she made. Had some dreadful crime
compelled her crew to abandon her?
As they neared her, stroke by stroke, the silent, voiceless, and
crewless craft, floating in utter silence upon the glassy tropical
sea, became an object calculated to impose awe and a solemn sense of
great mystery on the boat's crew. At last they were alongside, and
as it might have been dangerous to hook on the painter to any part of
her, the coxswain held on by boat-hook to the forechains, while with
their pulses accelerated by excitement, Paul Bitts and Derval
clambered up and leaped on board, the soul of the latter already
recoiling within him at anticipation of some sight of horror.
The deck was deserted, but ropes, &c. lay about everywhere in
confusion. The longboat was missing, but its chocks remained over
the main hatch. The quarter-boat, too, was gone, and the
fall-tackles swung idly at the davit-heads.
They descended to the cabin: it was empty; but a fixed lamp was
burning on the table, and a clock ticked at the bulkhead; some books,
wine-glasses, and a couple of decanters had evidently slipped off the
table, and lay in a heap to leeward. A paroquet, in a gilt cage,
hung in the skylight. Save this bird, there was no living thing on
board.
The cabin berths had not been slept in, and they, as well as the
forecastle bunks, were empty. There was no appearance of corpses, no
blood, no weapons, or sign of outrage anywhere. No ship's papers
could be found, but her name was the _Bonnie Jean of_ ... and the
rest was painted out!
After making certain that there was no one on board the derelict, as
the weather was becoming squally, and Captain Talbot had a signal
flying "to return," Mr. Bitts quitted the brig, and shoved off.
Boy-like, Derval had possessed himself of the paroquet--a beautiful
little love-bird, half green and scarlet--in its pretty cage,
thinking of it as a gift for his little brother at home; but with a
malediction, Paul Bitts told him to "let it alone," and as he
delayed, he took it out of the cage and tossed it away to leeward,
when it soon disappeared.
What could the emergency have been that caused the still flying
signal, now answered too late, "Can you send a boat?" to be hoisted,
and to what ship had it been exhibited? It could have been to no
town or fort in that latitude and longitude. Moreover, the burning
lamp showed that the desertion had been most recent. Where, then,
were her crew?
Conjectures were endless; a sharp look-out was kept from aloft, but
no boats were seen, and as the _Amethyst_ hauled her wind and pursued
her course, every eye was turned ever and anon to the floating
derelict till she was hull down, and even till her topsails sank
beneath the dim and blue horizon astern.
Derval recalled to memory the old and sea-worn wreck he had seen
floating in Barnstaple Bay, and the mysterious interest it had
excited in his childish mind, when he never thought that a day would
come and find him a sailor and far away on tropical waters.
The episode was duly recorded in the ship's log, and it formed the
staple object for comment in the forecastle for the next twenty-four
hours, eliciting the narration of many a quaint personal adventure
from the seamen, and one of these, a somewhat ghastly one, was told
by Joe Grummet.
"You must know, Mates," said he, "that when I was a foremastman
aboard the _Boomerang_ of Liverpool, bound from Newfoundland to
Waterford, in latitude 47 north and longitude 45 west, the look-out
men reported a boat in sight, on a dark-grey squally day in April,
and bearing about half a mile on the lee-bow, and in the stern-sheets
of that identical boat, far out in mid-ocean, sat a man, steering it
with an oar! There warn't no vessels in sight, but an iceberg or
two, for we were leaving the floes astern going north with the Gulf
stream, so the air, you may believe, was bitterly keen and cold. We
edged down towards him, but as he seemed to take no notice of us, or
heeded a shout or two, I was sent off with three hands in the
quarter-boat to overhaul him. My eye! we found as that 'ere boat was
steered by a corpse! In her stern-sheets he sat stiff, motionless,
lifeless, frozen hard as a rock, but with his head drooping a little
forward. He was rigidly upright, with the oar over the back-board of
the stern, as if he had been a-sculling, and so hard were his hands
frozen to it, that we failed to get it from the death-grasp. The
boat had been half full of water that had turned to ice, in which he
was wedged to his knees. Over his head and shoulders the spray and
spoon-drift of the sea had been washing again and again, freezing as
it came. How long he must have been dead, or whence or how he came
there, there was nothing to tell us. We held the water with our
oars, and held our breath too, as the boat with its terrible
occupant, on a current and before the impetus of the wind, went
bobbing past us, and we struck out for the ship, anxious only to see
the last of that ghastly boatman."
Clear, warm, and sunny was the weather as the _Amethyst_ ploughed the
tropical seas, when Derval saw in the sky the wonderful constellation
of six stars named the Southern Cross, which, though coeval with the
universe, was first seen with awe by Christian eyes in the fifteenth
century, when Cada Mosto, the Venetian, steered his caravel into the
Southern Sea.
One fine day Captain Talbot and his three mates were amusing
themselves with revolver practice, at a quart-bottle slung from the
foreyard-arm, at which they fired from the quarterdeck, but as the
motion of the ship was considerable, as she was then going before the
wind with all her yards square, and consequently rolled heavily, such
was the oscillation of the object, that after some twenty shots it
was only broken by Mr. Paul Bitts, who was greatly inflated by the
circumstance and the applause it won him and now ensued thereon, an
event somewhat illustrative of the strange doctrine of chances--a
thing happening by luck, without expectation or prevision.
As Mr. Bitts was dropping fresh cartridges into the chambers of his
breech-loading pistol, with the air of a candle-snuffer at twenty
paces, his eyes fell on Derval, who, with the other two middies, was
regarding him with some interest, if it was not a very warm one.
"Well, young fellow, do you think you could do that--eh?" he asked
with a grin.
"I should like to try, sir," replied Derval, colouring.
"Oho! the deuce you would! Why, you young----"
"Give him a shot," said Captain Talbot, interrupting some abusive
epithet; "take my revolver, Hampton. Grummet, run up another bottle
to the yard-arm."
"It will save trouble to let him have a shy at the neck--that is
enough for such a marksman!" sneered Paul Bitts.
Derval nervously took the Captain's pistol, for he had never had such
an implement in his hand before, raised it, aimed, and while thinking
the report was all he would make, fired, and, by a most astounding
"fluke," smashed the bottle-neck which was yet dangling from the
yard-arm!
A burst of astonishment escaped the crew, while the Captain, who
evidently knew how it all came to pass, laughed heartily; but not so
Mr. Bitts, who felt in this a fresh cause for hatred, and retired
aft, sulkily muttering:
"A sly young beggar, who, I believe, knows more of the world, the
flesh, and the devil, than the ship's crew all told, for all that his
face and manner are so devilish meek!"
But resting on the reputation so suddenly won, Derval did not, for a
long time, indulge in any more pistol-shooting.
Now came the time for crossing the line, and from all he had heard of
the rough jokes perpetrated on that occasion Derval had a genuine
terror of Mr. Bitts, for the absurdities practised often became
insulting and cruel. But such is the improvement now wrought among
seamen by the spread of education and general progress of refinement,
that these coarse sports are decidedly on the wane, and Captain
Talbot contenting himself with ordering extra grog to all to drink
the health of Neptune, the equator was passed quietly, and many
schemes formed secretly by Mr. Paul Bitts for shaving and sousing in
slush both Derval and his chum Tom Titford, ended in nothing, to the
great relief of both.
After the _Amethyst_ was some days' sail beyond the equator and
running on a wind, with her topsails set and starboard tacks on
board, the weather became peculiarly gloomy and squally, and one day,
when it was Derval's watch with Mr. Tyeblock, the Captain, who had
been studying the barometer below, came suddenly on deck, and looked
aloft and at the sky.
"Trim the yards anew, Mr. Tyeblock," said he; "the wind is getting
more ahead."
"Very good, sir," and the tacks and sheets were promptly attended to.
Joe Grummet and other old seamen were now seen looking occasionally
to windward, for they knew well by the dark clouds that were coming
banking up from the horizon that they had foul weather to prepare
for; but it came slowly. Two or three days of sunless gloom
followed, during which no sights could be had or reckoning properly
worked, and the doubts concerning the latter were fated to have a
perilous solution.
Night was closing amid mist and obscurity, the sea was rising, the
vessel rolling heavily, and all was in considerable confusion in the
cabin below, where everything that was not made fast _fetched away_,
and went crashing to leeward and got jammed or broken.
Coiled on a chest in the companion-way, Derval had been courting a
little sleep, when he heard the hoarse voice of Joe Grummet shouting:
"All hands, ahoy! all hands, ahoy! tumble up and take in sail!"
Thick and fast the rain-drops were now pouring on the deck, gorging
the foaming scuppers, rushing as they only do in the tropics; and
rolling from side to side, as if she would dip her yard-arms in the
mountain-like billows that ran towards her, the _Amethyst_, with her
courses set and topsails nearly close-reefed, was ploughing before
the wind through a black and midnight sea. Loud and repeated orders
rang confusedly on the rising blast, together with the trampling of
feet, the creaking of blocks, the bellowing of the wind through the
strained rigging, where loose ropes were flying wildly about, and
there were the roar, the wash, and fierce incessant gurgle of the sea
as it burst over the bows and boiled away beneath the counter.
"Close-reef topsails!" cried Captain Talbot, while the storm
deepened; and with others, Derval and Tom Titford, under Mr. Bitts,
ascended, to do their part of this task, by the fore-rigging, often
as they went embracing the shrouds with their legs and arms; and the
ill-conditioned third mate was heard using terrible language as he
urged them all up to the cross-trees and out upon the yard.
"Out you go to the starboard ear-ring, you wretched little
biscuit-nibbler, and don't look as if you had joined the Shakers!" he
exclaimed, administering a blow with his clenched hand to poor Tom
Tit, who turned his little white face upbraidingly towards him, and
then lay out manfully on one yard-arm as Derval did on the other, and
aided by the strong hands of the seamen at the centre of the spar,
got the heavy wet canvas tied hard and fast with the reef points.
Poor Tom "lay out" on the yard with a will, above the black and
seething deep, with all his strength; but in the fury of the wind it
began to fail him, or it might be that in the force of the gale he
lost his presence of mind, and when the men began their descent he
remained, with his hands convulsively clutching the yard, and his
feet on the slippery foot-ropes or in the stirrups thereof.
"Now then, stupid! are you going to sleep there?" cried Paul Bitts
from the crosstrees, "or must I rouse you with my colt, and make you
dance the binnacle hornpipe when I get you on deck?"
"Mother--oh, Mother!" the boy was heard to shriek, his small voice
sounding weirdly on the skirt of the howling blast, as he slipped
from the yard-arm, and vanishing into the wrack and obscurity below,
was seen no more!
Derval felt his blood grow cold; and as one in a dreadful dream, from
which he must waken to find Tom Tit by his side, he made his way, he
knew not how, but mechanically, to the deck, where the tragedy was
reported to the Captain. But there was not a moment now, either for
comment, explanation, or regret, for there came aft a terrible cry
from the look-out man at the bowsprit.
"Breakers ahead! breakers on _both_ bows!"
"In the name of heaven, how came breakers here!" exclaimed Captain
Talbot, for a moment forgetting that for many hours past he had been
unable to verify his whereabouts. Proceeding forward in haste, the
Captain went out to the cap of the bowsprit. In peril he was a man
whose nerves became as iron! Steadily he looked around him, but even
his cheek blanched then, though none could perceive it.
Through the black gloom, a blacker barrier of mighty rocks was rising
right ahead. Boiling fiercely before a northern blast, the sea was
breaking on them wildly, dashing its white spray as high as the
maintop, and, as the waves receded, the sable fronts of two
particular or insulated masses were plainly visible from time to
time, with a mass of froth between them; while accelerated by the
wind astern, and no doubt by the indraught in the reef, for a reef it
appeared to be, the stately _Amethyst_ seemed to increase her speed
from ten knots an hour to something far beyond it.
Clinging to a belaying pin on the port side, as the ship rushed on,
there came into Derval's uninitiated mind only the fear of immediate
death, with a quickened circulation of the blood and a painful
tightness of the chest, and in this emotion men far his seniors
shared, at that dreadful crisis; but now the voice of Captain Talbot,
who had obtained his trumpet, was heard even amid the roar of the
breakers, and a clear and manly voice it was.
In that tropical region the water and spray that swept over the ship
were warm nearly as new milk, and by this time the poultry and pigs
were all washed overboard and drowned.
"There is an opening in the reef, three points before the port beam,"
said the Captain; "Mr. Tyeblock, take the wheel and steer for
it--three points, remember! There may be water there to carry us
through. Hands to the braces; brace the yards, forward!"
Then, as the _Amethyst_ sprang to the blast, the waves boiled over
her lee gunnel; but finding a terrible strain aloft,--
"Let fly the topsail sheets!" was now the order of Captain Talbot,
and then, as the canvas flew to ribbons that cracked like thunder in
the gale, the topmasts were saved.
"Hard up with the helm now, Tyeblock! Hands to the braces and square
away the yards."
Headlong careered the ship on her way through the narrow passage
which Talbot's eye had detected, and splendidly was she steered in
the skilful hands of Tyeblock, who exultingly declared that he could
turn her on a sixpence.
"The reef is astern, we are safe, thanks be to God!" exclaimed
Captain Talbot, whose emotion of prayerful gratitude was shared by
all who heard him.
Deep water ahead, was reported by Girtline, the second mate, who was
in the bows with the hand-lead.
"Heave to, till dawn comes!" was now the Captain's order, and the
ship was accordingly hove to, about two miles to leeward of the reef,
and a keen look-out was kept in every direction for breakers.
On sounding the well, Joe Grummet reported that the ship had sprung a
leak, and the water was rising at the rate of two feet an hour; so
the chain pumps were rigged, and all idlers--such as the carpenter,
cook, steward, and others--took the first spell thereat, to be
immediately followed by a fresh gang, so that the leak made little
way.
The gale abated as day came in with its tropical rapidity and
splendour, and Captain Talbot knew instantly that the reef they had
so nearly perished on, was one of those between the numerous rocky
and barren little islets that stud the whole coast around the island
of Fernando-de-Noronha, which lies about seventy leagues north-east
from the Cabo de San Roque, on the coast of Brazil.
In the full glory of the morning sun, towered up the Campanario (or
Belfry), a steep mountain of the isle, a thousand feet in height, and
of a form so remarkable, that on one side the upper portion overhangs
its base. The Portuguese flag was hoisted on Fort Remedios, as the
_Amethyst_ passed on the north-west side of the island, with a soft
and pleasant breeze, while the hands were aloft, bending a new set of
topsails, or attending to the leak and other damages of the eventful
night.
While sent aloft, for practice, to assist in bending on the new
foretopsail, Derval had not much time either for reflection on the
catastrophe of the past sleepless night, or observing the wonderful
multitude of turtle's eggs which cover all the rocks and shore
thereabout between the months of December and April; but when
excitement and work were over, he, like others, had leisure to think
over poor Tom Titford, whose maritime career, to which he had looked
forward in all the delight of youth, was thus ended ere it had well
begun.
His empty berth and vacant place at table, his uniform cap hanging on
a peg, and his little trunk with all his worldly goods remained; but
his soft smiling face and his earnest honest eyes were gone from
human gaze for ever, and Derval and Hal Bowline were very sad on the
subject of his sudden loss, which made them somehow closer friends,
while each felt that the victim might have been himself or the other;
and both instinctively clenched their fists when they heard Bitts
say, with a silent laugh, that "even if the body were found, there
would be no coroner's inquest in the latitude of Pedro-de-Noronha,
and that young lubbers when they went aloft should remember the maxim
of 'one hand for myself, and one for my owners.'"
So the middy, of whose death the passing ship brought tidings, was
not Derval Hampton, but little Tom Titford. Had it been himself, he
thought, who would have sorrowed for him? and it cannot seem strange
that the image of old Patty Fripp occurred to the lonely lad even
before that of his own father.
For days after the storm, he felt his legs and arms stiff from the
effect of bruises and abrasions sustained in clasping the shrouds
when going aloft to reef the topsails.
Days of light breezes and bright weather followed each other now, and
on a fine morning in March the cheerful cry of "Land in sight,"
passed from mouth to mouth on board the _Amethyst_. To Derval's eye,
the faint blue mass that rose west-north-west about four miles
distant, seemed an island; but to Talbot and many of the crew it was
familiar as Cape Frio, a promontory on the Brazilian coast,
sixty-four miles eastward of their destination; and with all that
interest and curiosity excited by the appearance of a new and strange
country, he watched the oval-shaped mass of granite cliff that
terminates a long range of mountains, and all its features were
distinct by five in the evening, when it was only seven miles distant.
With midnight came squally weather, with thunder and red flashes of
lightning, against which, "instant seen and instant lost," rose the
black outline of the heavy waves, serrated like the teeth of a saw;
but when day came in, the _Amethyst_ was standing in for the Bay of
Rio de Janeiro, under full sail, with a steady breeze from the sea.
Long ere this, the watch on deck had been busy getting the cables out
of the tier, laying them in French-fake on the deck, a peculiar
method adopted to let them run out freely, precluding all danger of
the links getting foul. They were then bent to the anchors, which
were hoisted over the bows and hung by the ring ready for use.
The flag of the Royal Naval Reserve was now run up in a round ball to
the gaff, where it was shaken loose, and then "the blessed bit o'
bunting," as Joe Grummet admiringly and affectionately called it,
floated gallantly on the breeze.
By noon Captain Talbot gave the order to shorten sail; the courses
were hauled up; the warm breeze swept through the open rigging; the
anchor was let go--the cable swept with a roar through the
hawse-hole, and the ship rode at her moorings, in eight fathoms
water, while the hands and apprentices went aloft to furl everything
fore and aft.
Around was now the noble bay of Rio, studded by fully eighty islets,
with the city and all its shipping in the foreground; and the high
range of beautiful mountains, clothed with wood to their summits,
called the Corcovado, that bound its western plain, in the
background. Along the beach lies the main street, called the Rua
Dirieta, from which all the others branch off and form a city of
palaces, for such it is; and high over all its edifices, conspicuous
on a hill that juts into the sea between it and the Praya de
Flamingo, towers Nossa Senhora da Gloria, the greatest of the sixty
churches in Rio, where eternal spring and summer reign together.
But we do not mean to "do Guide Book," and dwell on the beauties and
wonders of Rio de Janeiro; neither do we mean to linger on the
_debût_ of Derval or his probationary life as a sailor, for we have
much to relate of his future career. Suffice it now, that "bulk" was
soon broken on board the _Amethyst_; the cargo started and sent
ashore, to be replaced by another for Van Dieman's Land, and by the
labour of slaves, who in Rio are made veritable beasts of burden, and
are to be seen with iron collars about their necks, and often with
masks of tin, that conceal the lower portion of their faces and are
secured behind by a common padlock; and the last day of March saw the
_Amethyst_ standing out of the bay, with a land breeze, under a press
of sail, once more to plough the world of waters.
Ere the vessel sailed Derval felt, but for the last time, the colt of
Mr. Paul Bitts, who called him "the lazy scum of a fish-pond," and
who delighted in malignant cruelty and the torture of his own
species, and highly resented the circumstance of the lad being a
little absorbed in a letter from home, brought by the mail steamer.
His father had heard of his safety, through the owners, Curry & Co.,
and no doubt the fright he had received caused him to reproach
himself, for a time--but a time only--with his coldness and neglect
of his firstborn, and lack of that affection which latterly he had
denied him and bestowed entirely on the other son; and poor Derval's
honest heart grew very, very full indeed, as he read and re-read the
lines his father's hand had traced, and which he valued more than the
twenty-pound note he enclosed to him, and which could not be of much
use while on the waters of the Southern Sea.
Fortunately he had been well grounded in Euclid and algebra, by the
kind tutelage of Mr. Asperges Laud, to whom his thoughts ever went
home gratefully; and in the knowledge of his profession he made rapid
progress under Joe Grummet, a tutor of a very different kind; while
his mind, as active as his body, required and delighted in scientific
research. He became a prime favourite with the seamen, knew and
understood their characters, and was all the more in favour that he
quickly knew the whole parts of the ship from stem to stern, and
could act by turns cooper and carpenter, sailmaker and ropemaker, so
clever was his head and so skilful was he with his hands.