*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 65144 ***

  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."




CHAPTER II.

TURTLE ISLAND.

"He didn't like seeing the guns cast loose, and the powder and small
arms brought on deck, this precious first mate of ours," said Joe
Grummet one day to Derval, when they were up aloft; "cos why? he is a
coward, and cowards are always cruel.  He was once a captain, but his
certificate is suspended--though I don't know for how long, but
suspended it is--cos why?  He caught a poor stowaway lad on board,
half dead with confinement and want of food, and how do you think he
treated him?  He lashed a ring-bolt with spunyarn athwart his open
jaws to prevent his shrieks being heard when he ropes-ended him, and
trained a dog to bite him; he headed him up in a cask and rolled him
round the deck; and this work went on for days.  He made a timber
hitch on a line, and hoisted him by the neck three feet from the deck
at a time, till his eyes started from their sockets, and blood and
froth oozed from his mouth, flogging him day after day, till one
came, when the poor boy was found dead under the lee of the
long-boat; and then his body, without service or prayer, was chucked
overboard.*  Now he sails as chief mate, but I wonder our owners took
him aboard at all."


* A fact.


This anecdote served to increase Derval's disgust for Rudderhead, who
seemed almost to divine that he was the subject of conversation, as
he stood on the quarter-deck, with his eyes steadily regarding them
in the foretop.

Amid fine weather, and accompanied by steady and pleasant breezes,
the _Amethyst_ made the Island of Desolation, or Kerguelen's Land,
the abode alone of petrels, albatrosses, gulls, and sea-swallows, on
the rifted rocks of which, washed by incessant rains, nothing grows
but saxifrage--a lonely and most melancholy place.

After passing it, the ship's log shows that she encountered a gale,
and that the watch had to take in the main topgallant-sail and
mainsail, with the fourth reef of the topsails; and set the
mainstay-sail.  In the evening she was under close-reefed topsails, a
reefed foresail, and was shipping heavy seas.

Fine weather came again, and one fine forenoon, a week or so after,
when Derval had the watch, the cry "Land ahead!" from the look-out
men caused every glass to be levelled at a dark-blue streak, that
rose like a cloud from the shining sea, upon the lee bow; and a
reference to the chart showed that it was one of those sequestered
and seldom visited isles in the South Sea, in latitude 60 south, and
110 west longitude, and is known as Turtle Island.

It was rocky, hilly, and seemed to rise fast from the sea, and to
loom large, through a kind of white haze, exhaled from the latter by
the heat of the sun; thus, by the bearings given, the reader will see
that it was a considerable distance south of the regular line from
Britain to Australia.

As Captain Talbot was anxious to procure some turtle, he gave orders
to stand towards it, and about nightfall came to anchor in seven
fathoms water, in a fine sandy bay where the waves rippled on the
beach as quietly as those of an island lake, and where groves of
trees grow close to the water's edge.

The volcanic rocks at the mouth of the bay were literally covered
with sea-hens, gigantic albatrosses, and other feathered tribes; wild
boars and wild goats could be seen by the glass ere the sun set, but
luckily no sign of inhabitants, on which Talbot rather congratulated
himself, as he knew well the isle possessed them, and that, like all
other South Sea savages, they were vindictive, cruel, and hostile to
all strangers.

By daybreak next morning two boats' crews, under Rudderhead and
Derval, taking with them handspikes or capstan bars, pulled in shore
to search for turtle.  They beached the boats at a place where a
number of large turtle were seen, well up on the shore, near some
dense brushwood, out of which black cocks flew from time to time, and
near which some great seals lay basking in the sun.

In high spirits the boats' crews sprang ashore, and intercepting the
retreat of the turtle, some of which were of such a size as to be two
or three hundred-weight, they proceeded with the handspikes to turn
them on their backs and leave them thus till several were captured,
and then tumbled into the boats.

Full of natural interest at treading on new soil, and looking on that
which he had never seen before, Derval, penetrating through the
brushwood, advanced some hundred yards upward and inshore, and heard
with pleasure the tender rustling of the leaves in the morning
sea-breeze, while inhaling the perfume of the aromatic plants and
myrtle-trees.  The brilliant green of the woods that crept up the
sides of the hills, which in one place were so lofty that the haze
shrouded their summits, were all novel and delightful, after the
monotony of the sea and sky during a long voyage.

While observing the brilliant tints and peculiar shadows given by the
morning sun to some volcanic rocks rising from the nearest grove of
trees, he became suddenly aware that they were swarming with black
savages, whose weapons, whatever they were, glittered in the sun, and
who from their eyrie were evidently watching the ship in the bay, if
not the party in quest of turtle on the beach.

He had scarcely made this discovery, when he became aware that Reeve
Rudderhead was by his side, with what intent he could not divine.
Curiosity had no doubt prompted him to follow Derval, simply to see
what was to be seen, and opportunity made him suddenly avail himself
of the time to do the fell crime he subsequently committed.

Enemies though they were, who never spoke but on inevitable matters
connected with ship duty, Derval could not refrain from drawing his
ungracious messmate's attention to the watching savages and their
hostile aspect, adding:

"Don't you think, sir, that we had better retire?"

They were already in motion and leaping down the rocks, with yells,
brandishing their spears and clubs.

"Retire?" growled Rudderhead with an oath, "I think so, unless we
mean to share the fate of Captain Cook; so here goes for one.  As for
you," he added, with one of his ferocious maledictions, "they may
pick your bones, and welcome!"  Then whirling the heavy hand-spike he
carried, circularly in the air, he struck Derval a blow on the back
of the head that felled him bleeding, stunned, and senseless, among
the brushwood!

The moment he had accomplished this terrible and atrocious act, he
went plunging down to the beach, shouting--

"The savages--the natives are upon us; into the boats with you for
your lives, and shove off to the ship!"

Alarmed by this cry, and being unarmed, the party were forced to be
content with what turtle they had got--some seven or eight--and
leaping into their two boats, pushed off at once from the shore, and
shipping their oars pulled away with a will, just as a naked horde of
dark-skinned savages, perfectly nude, save in the matter of the bead
ornaments that hung about their persons, shrieking, whooping,
yelling, and dancing like mad things, came rushing with war-clubs,
spears, powerful bows and arrows, close to the edge of the water, and
even rushing into it up to their waists.

The boats' crews could see their dark, copper-coloured skins, their
hair which was longer and straighter than the wool of the negro,
their gleaming eyes and white glistening teeth.  An arrow or two
whistled past, but wide of the mark, and with laughing shouts of
defiance the party brought their boats sheering alongside the ship,
when the turtles had ropes hitched round them, and were quickly
conveyed on board.

"Hoist in the boats," was now the order of Rudderhead, in his guilty
haste anticipating the authority of the captain for doing so.

In the haste and confusion with which they had embarked, the crew of
each boat probably thought--if they thought on the subject at
all--that Derval was on board the other; nor was it till the boats
were being actually hoisted in on each quarter, that he was missed,
and Joe Grummet asked, with some asperity and much alarm:

"Where is the third mate--where is Mr. Hampton?"

Then the boats' crews looked inquiringly and blankly into each
other's faces.

"Left on shore!" said Captain Talbot.  "Good heaven! what a fate he
must have met by this time!"

"We had not a moment to lose, sir, as you must have seen, if you had
been watching us," said Rudderhead sullenly and with averted eyes;
"his safety was his own look-out--not mine; and I think the third
mate could take jolly good care of himself."

The Captain was silent; the beach was now covered by a dingy horde of
savages, yelling and brandishing their weapons in defiance at the
ship, and he could not for a moment doubt that Derval Hampton must
have perished at their hands.

As for Mr. Reeve Rudderhead, he had not the smallest doubt about it
either, believing that the little life he had left, if any, in
Derval, would speedily be beaten out of him by the knob-sticks or
war-clubs of the islanders.

All on board--save Reeve Rudderhead--sorrowed for Derval, and were
loud in their praises and vehement in their regret (for, as an
officer, he was active, vigilant, and, if distant, yet most kind),
and none, perhaps, more than Captain Talbot, who valued him highly
for his gentlemanly bearing, good appearance, skill, and
conscientious interest in his duty; and in all this the Captain was
joined by old Joe Grummet, who would miss the listener to many a yarn
of the sea, and who sighed heavily, Like a head wind through a
hawse-hole, slapped his thigh, viciously chewed his quid, and
clenched his hard first many times, menacingly, while swearing
"strange oaths," and objurgating the eyes, limbs, and blood of some
individual unnamed, but who was shrewdly supposed to be the first
mate.

Closely did the Captain and his officers question the boats' crews,
but nothing could be elicited from them, save the facts that the
first and third mates had gone a little way inland together, and the
former would seem to have come back _alone_; but yet that Derval was
not specially missed till the boats were hoisted in; so Grummet and
Hal Bowline felt sure there must have been some treachery at work,
and that the most artful savage on Turtle Island had been Reeve
Rudderhead, and the brutal indifference of the latter greatly
exasperated them.

"What better could you expect of a fellow who was neither man nor
boy, sojer nor sailor?" growled Rudderhead.  "A lubber he was--always
reading when he should have been knotting, splicing, and learning to
box the compass."

Reading was not to the speaker's taste, though grog was, and he drank
it at night to keep out the cold, by day to cure the heat, never
sipping it, "but shipping it in bulk, at a mouthful," so Joe Grummet
said.

But now, regrets for Derval apart, active work was cut out for the
crew of the _Amethyst_.

Thick as bees the dark natives seemed to be swarming around the
shores of the bay; the alarm and muster of them seemed to be general,
and more than a score of pretty large canoes, full of armed warriors,
paddling the water into foam, howling like madmen, and all in a
frantic state of activity, shot out of mangrove creeks and other
places where they would seem to have been concealed, and very soon
the ship was nearly environed with them.

The small arms were all distributed by this time, the guns cast loose
and shotted with grape, the ports triced up, and the watch on deck
were ordered to prepare for sea.  The courses were let fall, the
topsails half-hoisted, and the ship was sheered to her anchor, _i.e._
steered towards it while weighing, so as to keep the wind and current
ahead, and thus lessen the friction on the hawse-pipe.

If the intentions of these people were hostile, which Captain Talbot
and his crew never doubted, they were not immediately aggressive, but
continued to paddle round and round the ship, coming as near as they
dared, as they had probably been fired upon by other vessels and knew
the effect of cannon and musketry.

The windlass bars were all shipped, but there was a great and
altogether unexpected delay in getting the anchor a-trip or even
roused.  The flukes seemed to hold on to something, and for a time
the bars were vainly strained in the grasp of the seamen, but "the
main piece," or beam of the windlass, remained immovable on its iron
spindles, and the oaths and execrations of Mr. Rudderhead, who, in
his anxiety, began to think of slipping the cable, were loud and
bitter.  The mouth of the bay was becoming well-nigh blocked up by
canoes, and the minds of all on board the _Amethyst_ were full of
those stories which ever and anon the public prints give, of the
wholesale massacre of ships' crews by savages in the isles of the
South Sea.

To intimidate them Captain Talbot ordered a 9-pounder, loaded with a
blank cartridge, to be fired; but like blank firing on a mob at home,
this precisely made matters worse, for even while the echoes of the
gun pealed over the water, seeing no effect followed, the savages
uttered screams of defiance and pulled closer, with the evident
intention of boarding, and arrows began to whizz over the ship, or
stick quivering into her sides and deck every instant.

At that instant the clanking of the windlass pawls was heard, a
welcome sound; the anchor was roused, "up-torn, reluctant from its
oozy bed," and was seen dripping a-cockbill at the cat-head.  The
topsails were fully hoisted and the courses sheeted home, but there
was very little wind, so the ship's progress was slow, and the arrows
were flying faster than ever.  Captain Talbot had his cheek laid open
by one, and three of the crew were more or less wounded, one by a
barbed reed, which cost Dr. Strang the greatest trouble to extract,
and perceiving that the strangers were taking to flight emboldened
the pursuers who came so close that they were endeavouring to reach
the side plates and chains.

"Depress the guns to port and starboard, fire wherever these devils
are thickest, and blaze away the small-arm men," cried Captain
Talbot, whose face was streaming with blood.

The savages, their canoes huddled close together, jostling and
crashing side by side, were now nearly all within pistol-range: thus
the effect of the double broadside, together with a sputtering fire
from the breechloading rifles over the gunnel, had a terrific effect
upon them.  The simultaneous roar of the 9-pounders burst like
thunder over the waters of the bay; for a brief space the vessel was
shrouded in smoke, and amid it the crew could hear that the defiant
war-yells had given place to those of terror, rage, and agony.

As the light smoke curled up through the rigging, or went ahead with
the wind, and the guns were drawn in for reloading, a scene of
terrible devastation became visible.  Many of the canoes were dashed
to pieces and floated in fragments on the water, clutched desperately
by hands that had relinquished the bow, the spear, or the war-club.
Other canoes were riddled and sinking with all on board.  Scores of
black heads were bobbing about like fishermen's floats, and all
around the _Amethyst_ the clear blue water of the bay was streaked
with blood.

The groans and gurglings of the wounded and dying who floated about
were somewhat heart-sickening.

"Cease firing the guns," cried the Captain, "but pick off any
scoundrel within range of the small arms."

Thus from the waist and quarter on both sides a desultory fire was
maintained; most deliberate were the aims taken at any black head
that appeared, for the crew had been thoroughly alarmed and
exasperated.  Just as the ship got clear of the bight or little bay,
and the wind began to freshen, a most singular act of retribution
took place.

As the guns and ports were being made fast, Reeve Rudderhead
chanced--for what reason or by what impulse he knew not--to look over
the side, when he perceived just beneath him a savage crouching in
the main chains dripping with blood from a wound in his throat, and
while hopeless of mercy, fearing to trust himself to the water while
the deadly rifles were in activity over his head.  Finding himself
discovered, quick as thought, with deadly and unerring hand, he
launched a spear at the first mate's head, and leaping into the water
was seen no more.

The lance, which had a small barbed head, went right through the two
cheeks of Mr. Rudderhead, who uttered a howl of rage and anguish, as
he rushed back fairly "spritsail-yarded," as the sailor's said, and
with his mouth so full of blood that he was soon speechless and
well-nigh choked, for a labial artery had been cut, and when Dr.
Strang removed the lance, by first sawing off its head, the
hæmorrhage was so great that the crew began to think--if they did not
precisely hope--that the wounded man would "slip his cable."

The wounds were dressed, a good horn of grog was next given him, and
he was tucked into his berth, where, doubtless, his reflections would
be of a somewhat mingled character.  His visage had received a double
wound, which, though he had not much beauty to mar, would render him
unpleasant to look upon for the remainder of his life.  He had no
compunction for his treacherous conduct to Derval, even in the least
degree, and he was chiefly occupied in surmising whether he had
killed him outright, or if the savages were--like most of the South
Sea islanders--cannibals, what they might do if they found him dead
or alive; and, lastly, whether Mrs. Hampton would "come down
handsomely" on learning that she was--as her letter had it--rid of
him; then he savagely cursed his present plight, and lay growling on
his pillow, while the breeze freshened and sail was made on the ship,
and ere night fell upon the sea Turtle Island was out of sight.

And now to record the retribution referred to!

The arrow-wounds of Captain Talbot and others progressed most
favourably under Dr. Strang's skilful treatment; but whether it was
that the blood of Rudderhead was in an unhealthy state, or that the
spearhead had been poisoned, it was difficult to discover, as the
hurts he had received, so far from healing, grew daily worse and
worse.  His agony increased till it drove him to madness; he could
neither eat nor drink.  His face swelled up and became discoloured
until he was something frightful to look upon, and times there were
when his groans, prayers, and imprecations rang through the whole
ship, and chilled the very souls of the men in the watches of the
night.

To Dr. Strang it was soon evident that he was dying; but he had much
vitality in him, and died hard, in his latter hours raving of the
scuttled ship or the stowaway, of Derval Hampton, and many other
persons and events.  The wind was blowing a heavy and increasing
gale, and the _Amethyst_ was scudding under close-reefed topsails, in
a perilous and chopping sea, when Rudderhead passed away, clutching
the Captain's hands, as if he could retain him in this world, and
passed from it, impenitent for the past, yet hopeless of the future;
and the fiat of the doctor was that the ship could not be too soon
rid of his remains.

At that crisis the brevity of even a funeral at sea was dispensed
with, and he was thrown overboard to leeward, into the trough of an
angry midnight sea, with four 9-pound shot at his heels--buried
precisely as he had buried the poor stowaway boy, without a prayer,
finding a grave "unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown."

As if his departure had been awaited for by the spirit of the storm,
the latter lulled rapidly, and, when day broke, the cheerful cry of
"Land ahead!" announced that the bold and rocky south-west cape of
Tasmania was only ten miles distant, and bearing north-east, with the
mountains, snow-capped ate that season, in the back-ground.

Next day saw the _Amethyst_ working through D'Encastreaux's Channel,
sixteen miles eastward of it, to her safe anchorage off Hobart Town,
from whence the mail took home the intelligence of Derval Hampton's
fate on Turtle Island.  The fight with the natives there formed a
passing newspaper paragraph, and, so far as he was concerned, there
was an end of it.

When Greville Hampton--that sorely-changed man, whose god had become
gold--heard of his eldest son's miserable fate, "some natural tears
he shed," as memory went back to the little golden-haired boy that
was wont to nestle at Mary's knee, in the little cottage which was as
much a thing of the past as herself.  Master Rookleigh Hampton heard
of it with perfect philosophy, as became, he thought, a lad of his
years; and Mrs. Hampton, as in duty bound, put on, for as brief a
period as decency required, a most becoming suit of mourning.  But
there was one who, when he read of the event while glancing over the
newspaper, really sorrowed for Derval--Lord Oakhampton, who, when he
looked at his happy little daughter in her budding beauty, and
thought of what might have been, and how nearly he lost her, could
not but regret the untimely fate of the brave young sailor to whom he
owed her life and safety, and said much to her on the subject that
made the gentle girl feel deeply.

Four more years passed on, and the name and existence of Derval
Hampton became almost forgotten in his father's house, or was,
perhaps, remembered chiefly by his nurse, old Patty Fripp.

By that time Rookleigh, strangely precocious, had become--in his
sixteenth year--almost a man ere boyhood was past, and during that
part of his career, he showed indeed how "the child is the father of
the man."  Greedy, avaricious, like Mr. Ralph Nickleby (in _his_
youth) he was wont to lend to his companions and schoolfellows
halfpence to be repaid by pence, and so forth; and his disposition
was further largely leavened with cruelty, which seemed born in him,
and bade defiance to all remonstrance.  Servants, horses, dogs, and
even insects felt its virulence, and when Mr. Asperges Laud spoke
reprehensively on the subject, his mother would merely urge that "he
was just like other boys," and that all boys are cruel.  And already
in his sixteenth year, by the influence of companions, though selfish
and avaricious to a degree, he, through the medium of billiards,
cards, and a betting-book, was utterly wasting the time during which
he was waiting for the rent-roll which his mother assured him must
one day be his.  He was tall, well-made and well-featured, for both
his parents were handsome, but the expression of his face,
particularly of his shifty green eyes--for they were less
golden-hazel in tint than those of his mother--proved unpleasant to
all who knew him, and indicated a great latent spirit of evil and
malevolence.

In the succession of his tutors, in the society with which he
mingled, and in all his surroundings, Rookleigh Hampton had a
thousand advantages that the unfortunate Derval had never known, yet
with them all he did not eventually make a particular figure amid the
circle in which he moved.

Though lavish enough in his expenditure upon himself, and even on
those who flattered him, ministered unto him, and made life lively
and pleasant by pandering to his weaknesses, the leading features of
his character were gross selfishness and avarice or acquisitiveness,
all of which he seemed to have inherited from his mother, or through
the force of his father's latter thoughts, and were thus, to the
manner, born in him.

As when poor Derval sailed on his fatal voyage, Greville Hampton
might be found daily in his luxurious library, settling mortgages,
signing contracts, adjusting ground-rents, buying up land and old
manor-houses to remodel or remove for new ones--up to the eyes among
deeds and papers, with old Mr. Stephen De Murrer, the family
solicitor, a denizen of Gray's Inn, who about this time began to
exert himself anew in the peerage claim of his lucrative employer,
and eventually visited Lord Oakhampton, at his house in Tyburnia, on
the subject.

Proud and haughty by nature, though a scrupulously well-bred and most
aristocratic-like man, his lordship could be very cold and repellent
to those he disliked; thus his reception of the stout and deliberate
old lawyer, when the latter was ushered into the stately drawing-room
overlooking the park, was neither soothing nor encouraging.

"You are a bold fellow, Mr.--oh--Mr.----"

"De Murrer," said the lawyer, bowing.

"Yes--a bold fellow, sir, to come to me personally on this subject,
of which I admit having heard before--a claim to my hereditary
peerage by this whilom spendthrift--obscure beggar, and latterly
successful speculative builder!  Absurd, sir!  The matter has no face
upon it--won't hold water," continued Lord Oakhampton, scornfully;
"and anyway, I beg to refer you to my solicitors at Gray's Inn."

"If, my Lord--if the assumption that your great ancestor was summoned
by mistake to the House of Peers, in the reign of Queen Anne, is
proved--and it is also proved that the real heir was then in
existence--the heir from whom my client is descended--what then, my
Lord?"

Mortification, exasperation, and pride made the haughty heart of Lord
Oakhampton thrill painfully, and he listened to this, and much more
that the little lawyer had to advance, as one in a dream.  The flies
buzzed about the flowers in a magnificent jardiniere; a French clock
ticked monotonously on the mantelpiece; and the busy life of London
outside, went on as a ceaseless stream; but he felt as if all this
evil were about to happen, not to himself, but to someone else, in
the confusion and irritation of his mind.

"We shall suppose this peculiar claim made good and clear in law,
Mr.--Mr.----"

"De Murrer," suggested the lawyer, blandly.

"What would be the result?"

"Can you ask me?" said Mr. De Murrer; "most calamitous to your
Lordship, I assure you."

"In what way, sir?"

"What way?"

"Don't repeat my words, sir!"

"With the title would go lands and estate, plate,
pictures--everything, even to your household effects!"

Lord Oakhampton grew pale--very pale, yet less at the thought of
himself than of his daughter, for the world was all before her yet.
Rallying a little, he said:--

"You cannot think, Mr. De Murrer, that I will yield without a
struggle--and a desperate one too!"

"Unquestionably not, my Lord; only----"

"Only what?" he asked, impatiently.

"With the solid and simple proofs we----"

"Proofs that must be submitted to the legal acumen and most searching
analysis of my law advisers!"

"Indubitably, my Lord; yet the dates are, fortunately for us, not
remote ones."

"Indeed!"

"Your Lordship's great-grandfather Derval, to whom a great mass of
the estate came by marriage with the Mohuns, was called to the Upper
House in the year of the Union with Scotland, 1707, and sat in the
first British House of Lords, as the direct heir of Derval, Lord
Oakhampton, who was forfeited under Edward IV., but was restored by
Henry VII. for his service against the King of Scotland; yet your
great-grandsire was so summoned in ignorance that his eldest brother,
who had quarrelled with his family, was not dead, but was married,
and settled in Bermuda, where he became ancestor, in the third
degree, of Greville Hampton, now of Finglecombe."

"Intolerable dry-as-dust stuff this!" exclaimed Lord Oakhampton, his
pride and passion rising again.  "Do you imagine that I am an entire
committee of privileges, to listen to all this twaddle, and that the
title that has come to me, through a long line of stainless
ancestors, is to be disturbed by the outrageous pretensions of an
obscure colonist's grandson.  Moreover, sir, do you think that I am
also unaware how men of your trade make it their business to rake up
such claims if they can, and assume to guide the destinies of the
rich and noble, as the means of bringing money to their own coffers?"

To this somewhat injurious speech, the little lawyer only shrugged
his shoulders, and smiled deprecatingly, as he replied:

"I can easily understand, and well pardon, your Lordship's natural
irritation at the prospect all this action-at-law involves; the loss
of rank and position--wealth and political influence; your daughter,
at her very entry into life and society, reduced, like yourself, to
the condition of a commoner; the newspaper comments--the nine days'
wonder of London; the sneers of the once servile, and the mockery of
the malevolent, and of all who take a cruel delight in strange
reverses of fortune; but I would beg of you to think over the matter
to be contended; for the mere announcement that not only was your
title about to be contested, but your property litigated, would bring
any creditors you have, like a swarm of hornets on you."

Mr. De Murrer now took his hat and departed, certain that this
Parthian shot was the heaviest and sharpest he had fired; and sooth
to say, my Lord Oakhampton felt and knew it to be so!

His alarm, however, and infinite anxiety, rather died away when
delays ensued consequent to the disappearance or alleged death of
Derval, and still more by the sudden demise of Greville Hampton, who
was found lifeless at his desk one afternoon, when at his usual task
of calculating and speculating.

The bulk of all his fortune he left by will to Rookleigh, while Mrs.
Hampton was handsomely provided for during her life.  The sum of £500
per annum was set apart for Derval, in case he was ever heard of; if
not within a given time, it reverted to Rookleigh.

So Greville Hampton was dead, and Rookleigh stood at the head of his
grave as chief mourner; but he was not laid by Mary's side in the
pretty little churchyard where for ages, yea since Saxon times, "the
rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."  No, no; Mrs. Hampton took
care of that; so he was deposited in the new and pretentious
mausoleum of Cornish granite, in the fashionable cemetery of "the new
and rising watering-place of Finglecombe," where a special spot was
reserved for herself.

In the matter of the peerage claim, Mrs. Hampton would have left
nothing undone, of course, to urge Mr. De Murrer in advancing the
interests of her well-beloved son Rookleigh; but just about the time
of her husband's death, something occurred which led to a change in
her mind, or to indifference on the subject, and this "something"
proved to be tidings of--Derval!




CHAPTER III.

H.M.S. "HOLYROOD."

After being struck down by Reeve Rudderhead, in the merciless way we
have described, Derval lay long insensible, and when his thoughts
began to turn again to earth, he was haunted by a dream of home--of
wild grass where the brindled cattle stood knee-deep, of fields
studded with the white stars of the dog-daisies, the golden
buttercups, and scarlet poppies, of rose-tangled hedges and
meadow-sweet; then came the face and figure of Rudderhead--and
starting, he staggered up on his hands and knees, weak and giddy with
loss of blood, dim of sight, and his head racked with pain by the
force of the blow.

What sounds were these?  Cannon and musketry and yells in the air, as
if the fiends of the lower world had broken loose.  He remembered the
savages from which the boats' crews were escaping, and with a heart
filled by terrible emotions of anxiety and rage--anxiety for himself,
and rage to find that he was the victim of a plot between Reeve
Rudderhead and Mrs. Hampton--he crept cautiously through the
brushwood among which he had been lying, and where a pool of his
blood yet lay, till he reached the brow of a little eminence which
overlooked the bay, and arrived in time only to see the last of the
conflict between the _Amethyst_ and the savages.

The bay was strewed with the floating ruins of many canoes, and the
dead bodies of their whilom occupants; others were being paddled away
in hot haste; the ship was under weigh, with her topsails sheeted
home and her head-sails filled;--under weigh, and he--unable to join
her, or make any sign or signal--was left behind!

With all that conviction implied, a great stupor--the stupor of utter
horror--fell upon him, and he could have wept tears of rage and
despair.

Defenceless, helpless, powerless, almost petrified by the whole
situation, he gazed after the ship, on which sail after sail was
spread to catch the land breeze, as she already began to lessen in
distance upon the blue and shining sea; then sight seemed to pass
from him--a blindness to descend upon his eyes; he became faint, and,
falling on the earth, with the last effort of sense, crept under some
of the gigantic ferns, with which the island abounds, and for a time
remembered no more.

When sense again came, and he looked about him, the shadows were
falling eastward; the ship had become diminished to a speck upon the
ocean, then reddened by the setting sun.  He gazed after her as if
his soul followed her, and when he could see even the spectrum of her
no longer, a groan escaped him, and he burst into tears.

On one hand spread the boundless sea; on the other, a succession of
knolls and hills and bluffs, with pine-covered summits, and little
grassy vales between them, all glowing under the gleaming west.

What was to be his fate?

He dared not speculate upon it, though whatever was in store for him
must be close indeed now!

Dipping his handkerchief in a runnel he bathed the back of his head,
thus removing the clotted and extravasated blood, and then bandaged
up the wound with his necktie.  A deep draught taken in the hollow of
his hands from the same pool revived him, and a few wild peaches,
figs, and grapes afforded him food; after which hermit-like repast he
seated himself against a rock and strove to think--to think, of what?
While the lower portion of the western sky assumed a vermilion hue,
and the upper was violet braced with gold; sunk in shadow now, the
waves rose with a silvery sheen upon the yellow sand, their ripple
alone breaking the stillness of the place and time; but the moment
the sun, with its tropical rapidity, sank beyond the sea, all these
varied and wonderful tints passed away at once.

Derval remembered the picturesque elements of the scene afterwards;
at the time, he was certainly not in the mood to appreciate them.

The parrots, pigeons, and straw-necked ibises had all gone to their
nests; some kangaroo-rats (about the size of rabbits) and squirrels
were flitting about; Derval's first fear was of snakes, but he saw
none.

The multitude of savages that in the morning had been swarming on the
shore, had all disappeared, and gone inland to their kraals and
villages; but how long would he be able to elude them; and as for
their habits and nature, he could not doubt that they were in any way
less terrible and revolting than those of other South Sea islanders,
most of whom are cannibals.

As he thought of the home he had quitted years ago, of his father's
changed nature and indifference, his brother's selfishness, his
stepmother's unrelenting malevolence, and Reeve Rudderhead's cruel
treachery, all culminating in the present catastrophe, leaving him to
perish helpless and unavenged, excitement made his wound burst out
afresh, and he staunched it again with difficulty.

The southern constellations came out in all their wonderful
brilliance, and under their silvery light, he sat lost in thoughts
that wrung his heart.  How long--even if he found food and
concealment--might it be ere a ship passed that way; and if one did,
how was he to attract the attention of those on board--how signal to
them unseen by the savage inhabitants of the isle?

The memory of much that he had read, of men wrecked or marooned in
lonely and desolate places, together with the fancies of a quick and
fertile imagination, added greatly to the poignancy of his mental
sufferings.  For in its desperation his situation was a maddening
one, and calculated to blind him with horror and despair.

Was he to perish of starvation and exposure in the groves of the
island, or to find a death of torture at the hands of its
inhabitants, without obtaining even a grave? for there was a detail
in the future after death, that made his blood run cold to think of.

And was this unthought-of fate to be the end of all his once bright
day-dreams, his hopes and aspirations!  And were all his bright
ambitions and little vanities--the vanities and ambitions of ardent
youth--to end in less and worse than utter nothingness?

He feared to move about even in search of food, lest the track of his
footsteps might be found, for he knew that the aboriginals of such
places can follow as blood-hounds do--but by sight, not scent, and in
a manner that seems incredible to the European--any track they find,
and follow it, too, over grass and rock, even up a tree; thus he knew
that were his traces found, he would inevitably be tracked and
discovered, wherever he went.

So the long hours of the night went slowly past, and he longed, as a
change or relief, for morning.  "Poor fools that we are!" says a
writer; "our hours are in time so few, and yet we forever wish them
shorter, and fling them, scarcely used, behind us roughly, as a child
flings his broken toys."

At last exhaustion of the mind and body brought blessed sleep, and on
the dewy earth, under the shelter of some black and silver mimosa
trees, he slumbered heavily till the noon of the next day was well
advanced, and the sun shone in the unclouded sky.

He had a dream of the now defunct cottage at Finglecombe, as it
existed when he was wont to play by his mother's knee, or watch with
childish wonder his silent father, a moody and discontented man.  He
started and awoke, recalling an old Devonshire superstition, that to
have a dream of one's childhood, when in maturity, was a sure sign
that something was about to happen.

"Oh, what may that something be!" was his first despairing, rather
than hopeful, mental thought, and with it came a terror of what the
long and solitary hunger-stricken day might bring forth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Captain 's in the cabin."

The unexpected visitor descended at once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes--it is home."

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

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

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

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

Derval fell in love!




CHAPTER IV.

"THE DESIRE OF THE MOTH FOR THE STAR."

"I have never been so far out from the Marine Parade before--so far
out at sea, I mean."

"But you are not uneasy--alarmed?" asked the young man, with great
tenderness of manner.

"Oh, no; am I not with _you_?" answered the girl sweetly and simply,
as she drew off a glove and let the water slip through her slender
white fingers, as the boat, urged by the powerful hands and arms of a
handsome and sunburnt young fellow of twenty-two or thereabout, clad
in a white flannel boating costume, with canvas shoes and a straw
hat, shot through the water of the bay in view of Finglecombe.

It was a summer evening.  The sun was setting beyond the Bristol
Channel, and seeming to light its waves with fire.  The rocks, the
gardens and orchards along the shore, and all the villas of "the
rising watering-place" were bathed in ruddy light, blended with a
misty golden haze; and the warm glow fell on two bright faces in
particular.  When the oarsman looked with wonder at the changes on
the shore, as he sometimes did, the girl looked at him, not in a way
she was wont to do, but with a soft expression in her tender eyes
that he would have given the world to have seen.

Anon, when at some distance from the shore, he rested on his skulls,
leaving them in the rowlocks, while the boat floated idly on the
sunlit water.

"Please do not do any more of _that_," said the young lady.

"Of what?" asked her companion.

"This tatooing," said she, pointing with her parasol to his handsome
bare arms, on which he had punctured, in sailor fashion, a ship in
full sail, three choughs, and other insignia known to himself alone.

"Ah!  Joe Grummet did all these one evening, when we were standing
off and on under easy sail near Cuba," said Derval, for the speaker
was he, and the beautiful girl who sat opposite to him in the
stern-sheets, and on the dainty cushions of the pleasure-boat, was
Clara, Lord Oakhampton's only daughter.

And now to explain how all this came about, and that these two were
so intimate.

Derval was not long in discovering, from the visitors' lists, that
Lord Oakhampton had taken, for the summer months, a villa in Bayview
Terrace, Finglecombe, but had ignored the existence of the widow of
his late namesake.

This was nothing to Derval, who immediately called at the villa and
sent up his card, and was warmly received by Lord Oakhampton, who, we
have said, was a tall and handsome man, with stately manners.  He was
elderly now, with silvery hair, but his fine aquiline features were
unchanged in noble outline and honesty of expression.  After a few
mutual remarks and inquiries,

"I called," said Derval, "to do myself the honour of personally
thanking your Lordship for the medal for which you so kindly
recommended me."

"A medal most deservedly won by you, and my life-long gratitude went
with it to you!" replied Lord Oakhampton, as did his daughter, who
soon made her appearance, and saw that their visitor was a handsome
and manly-looking young fellow.  His brown hair was deeper in colour
than it had been in Bermuda, and a slight moustache shaded a
sensitive mouth.  His tall and slender figure had all the strength
and grace of manhood in it, and his manners were unexceptionable.
His early training had made him grave in manner, thoughtful in
expression of eye, courteous to men and deferential to women; in
fact, he was all his mother could have wished him to be.

"Clara, my dear," said Lord Oakhampton bowing, with much of the
old-fashioned courtesy which certainly did distinguish his manner
when addressing her, or, indeed, any female of his household, "may I
introduce an old friend to you--one to whom, indeed, you owe much!"

Clara Hampton looked up with something of surprise, and saw only a
young man like a naval officer--but a very handsome one
certainly--who answered her inquiring gaze by a bow and a smile.

"How unfortunate I am to have been forgotten by you, Miss Hampton,"
he said.

"Forgotten--oh, no, no," she exclaimed as sudden recognition flashed
upon her, and lightened all her features; "I remember you perfectly,
and the sharks' pool and the coral cavern in Bermuda--you are our
namesake, Mr. Derval Hampton?"

And she frankly put both her hands in his.

"You are grown quite a woman, Miss Hampton."

"She will be eighteen on her next birthday," said her father; "but
women are by nature older than men," he added laughingly.

And so it all came about thus.

Every detail of a beauty that seemed to have no peer, in his eyes at
least, did Derval take in by one swift glance.  In all the bloom of
her age, the girl was radiantly bright and fresh.  Her rich brown
hair was darker now, and more luxuriant than ever; but the violet
eyes were softer and more shy than in the girlish time, when she
accorded to Derval that kiss over which he fondly pondered now.  But
perhaps she was remembering it too.  On her delicate cheeks there was
a soft flush, as of the rose-leaf; her mouth was perfect in shape,
and sweet.  Refined, proud, and lovely, and she looked--birth stamped
on every feature--a peer's daughter every inch, and in every way a
picture fair to look upon; and so thought Derval.  Never before had
he dreamed that a woman could be so fair.

He was invited to stay to dinner; the invitation was repeated for a
second occasion and a third.  Lord Oakhampton had evidently few
friends in that part of the world, was the modest thought of Derval,
and the Bermuda Isles formed a safe and easy topic for general
conversation when other subjects failed; and the usually haughty peer
thawed fast and easily towards his young friend--little dreaming that
the latter was learning faster to love his daughter, and not the less
that he deemed this love a midsummer madness, and too surely might be
only like the desire of the moth for the star!

They met on the marine parade, on the shingly beach, and singularly
enough in some of the shady green lanes, that had escaped recent
improvements; but Miss Sampler was always with her, a companion now.
Derval felt his heart leap when he saw her, and it trembled as she
drew near him, and as it had never trembled under human influence
before.  He showed her the locket she had given him at Bermuda.  She
laughed at first, and then coloured deeply to find that he wore it
attached to his neck by a ribbon.

Yet after this she neither avoided him, nor made any change in her
demeanour towards him.  What could he deduce from that, but that she
favoured him, or received him as a means of passing the time in a
stupid watering-place.  It was bitter for him to think that
she--secure in a position so far above him in many respects--might be
doing thus; but from the soft, shy gentleness of her manner, it was
impossible to adopt such a conviction.

Twice, when escorting her to the dinner-table, he thought that her
hand--how little it was!--leant rather fondly on his arm, and the
idea made his heart thrill.  Is it a marvel that his head was turned
and intoxicated by the opportunities offered by propinquity, and that
the secret of his heart was daily trembling on his lips?

Was she luring him on to his own destruction?  Her calm, gentle eye,
and perfect quietude of manner, repelled this idea.  Could he but
have looked into the girl's heart!  At that very time she was asking
herself, what was this young sailor to her?  Why should she feel so
deeply interested in him, for such was indeed the case!  Cold reason
replied that he ought to be as nothing to her; yet her heart already
told her that he was something, and more than something to dream
of--to ponder on fondly--to be sorely missed when he departed--as if
his life were already mysteriously linked with her own.

"His life linked with hers?  What folly!" she whispered to herself,
as she thought of her proud father and "society."

So now they had taken them to boating on the bay; but Miss Sampler
who usually played propriety in their apparently casual walks,
disliked aquatic excursions, and generally sat reading on the beach,
while Derval pulled far enough out to be beyond the ken of anything
but a powerful lorgnette, and of this Clara generally possessed
herself "to see the coast."

On the evening mentioned, when Clara referred to the tatooing, and
made Derval promise to disfigure his arms no more in that remarkable
way, it may be inferred that their intimacy had made considerable
progress--the result of the somewhat untrammelled life they led at
Finglecombe--and seldom does the evening sun fall upon a pair of more
attractive-looking lovers--for lovers they were undoubtedly--though
no distinct word of love had passed between them.

It lingered, softly as Derval's own eyes, on Clara's graceful figure,
her creamy dress and soft laces, on her shining hair, and pretty
little feet encased in hose of bright cardinal silk and tiny
_bottines_, the most perfect that Paris could produce--_bottines_
which the folds of her dress had kindly revealed for a time.

Seeing that Derval was resting, as we left him--resting dreamily on
his sculls, and letting the boat drift with the current, while his
soul was full of her beauty, and his heart seemed at his lips, she
said:

"Of what are you thinking?"

"Of you," he replied, and he saw that she grew pale at the idea of
what might follow, and the conviction that she had drawn it on
herself; "I was thinking that you could be a friend good and true, if
you chose; and heaven knows," he added with a sigh, and timidly
fencing as he thought, "I want one."

"Have you not Rookleigh, your brother of whom I have heard, but,
oddly, never seen?"

"To me he is a brother, and no brother!"

"I will be your friend," said she, coyly.

"Ever!"

"Ever and always.  Think of all I owe you--that I am here to-day,
alive and in the world, listening to you, and spared to Papa."

Bright ardour filled his eyes, and stooping he pressed her hand to
his lips; but she snatched it away.

"I do not mean friendship of that kind!" said she, blushing with
anger at herself for taking, as she thought, the initiative; then he
too reddened, and a pause ensued.

Clara had not the least idea of flirting; and yet the most consummate
coquette could not have been more fascinating in her charming
frankness of manner.

"Of what are you thinking now?" he asked, as her white fingers played
with the shining ripples.

"Of Bermuda," she replied, with a soft smile in her averted face.

"You were a child then--five years ago--and now----"

"What am I now?" she asked, laughingly.

"Look into the water where your face is reflected, and you will see."

"See--what?"

"A face, like no other in this world--to me, especially."

"Now you talk foolishly."

"God knows, I do--perhaps," said he, sadly; "it is pleasant to dream
for the present, and to forget the coming future, for all this sweet
companionship must end, and when I return to England again, you will
be no longer Clara Hampton."

"What then--or who then?" she asked in a low voice.

"The wife of some happy man."

"Why are you so sure?"

"Of what?"

"That he will be happy."

"Could he be otherwise with you?"

All this was pointed enough; but both were fencing--he dreading a
repulse, and she thinking of her father's pride.  Yet both were very
pale, and their hearts beat violently.

"And how came you to be so assured of all this?" she asked, looking
down.

"You are beautiful, rich, noble, Clara!"

"You must not call me Clara.  Rich?  You think, then, that no one
would love me for myself alone?" she asked a little bitterly.

"I have not said so."

"Did you think so?"

"Heaven forbid! but judging from my own heart, I wish,
indeed--indeed----"

"What?"

"That you were as humble and as poor as the beggar-maid whom King
Cophetua loved."

"Thank you, a very odd wish!" she said, with a low musical laugh.

"Oh, do not mock me!" he exclaimed bitterly--for no lover likes his
heroics to be made a jest of; but no mockery was in the girl's heart;
she felt as if dreaming; she only felt and knew that her lover was
beside her, looking more manly and handsome, and more fascinating,
than the first day they met; but she thought of her father and his
lofty pride, and said with apparent firmness, yet with a gasp in her
slender white throat,--

"I do not mock you--oh, never, never think that of me; but for pity's
sake, talk no more in this strain; and do pull the boat in shore, for
I see Miss Sampler is making signals of impatience."

Though her long lashes imparted a dreamy depth to the young girl's
eyes, there were in the low, broad brow, firm lips, and clearly-cut
nostrils, evidence of force of character and strength of resolution.

Derval understood the situation; he sighed, shipped his sculls, and
pulled in silently, feeling that he had said enough to show that he
loved her, and that she chid him not, he resigned her to her
chaperone, and betook him, full of anxious thoughts, to the solitude
of his room at the hotel; yet each felt that they must meet again, or
that henceforward life would be a blank to them; and eye said this to
eye as they parted on the shore.

It was rather a source of exasperation to Mrs. Hampton in her stately
villa, that Derval should be so intimate with Lord Oakhampton and his
daughter, while she and her son were not--were ignored, in fact; and
this, with Derval's protracted residence at the hotel, caused no
speculation among her friends and the gossips of the new settlement
or watering-place; and, incited to mischief by his mother, Rookleigh
Hampton began to scheme revenge; nor were Patty Fripp's ample and
exulting expatiations on the rare beauty of Miss Hampton, and the
great glory of Derval's boating expeditions with her, wanting as a
spur on this occasion.

Lord Oakhampton remarked to himself that neither by word, act, nor
hint, did Derval ever refer to his late father's dreaded claim to the
coronet.  This pleased with him with his young friend, yet it was not
without annoyance and alarm that he discovered and viewed the growing
intimacy between him and his daughter, and painfully, indeed, did the
latter blush when he began to remonstrate with her upon the subject;
and her pain was all the deeper by a knowledge that she had brought
it upon herself.

Seated together with her father in an oriel window overlooking the
bay, her mind, as evening darkened and the moonlight came upon the
water, was full of what had passed between herself and Derval but a
very short time before, and after a silence of some minutes she said,
with the irrepressible desire to talk of what was nearest her heart
and uppermost in her thoughts,--

"Have you ever remarked, Papa, what a handsome young man Mr. Hampton
is?"

Lord Oakhampton started quickly, and looked at her, but Clara's face
was hidden in shadow.

"Of course I have observed it," he replied; "he is not only handsome,
but distinguished-looking, for a man of his class.  He comes of a
good family."

"Yes--is he not some relation of our own, Papa?"

"Has he ever said so--does he talk of such a matter?" asked Lord
Oakhampton, in a changed tone.

"Oh, no, Papa, but he strikes me as so unlike the men I usually meet."

Lord Oakhampton was silent for a minute; then he said, with some
asperity of manner,--

"Since when has this extreme intimacy with Mr. Hampton been in
progress?"

"Extreme intimacy, Papa!" said Clara, in a tone of dismay, and
colouring deeply in the twilight.

"Yes; you understand me, I presume?"

"I have known him since the day he sent up his card, and renewed the
intimacy that began at Bermuda."

"That was but a casual, but very important episode; but what passed
then, under the circumstances, temporarily, when you were but a
child, cannot be continued or tolerated now.  He is but a merchant
seaman!"

"A mate, Papa, and a commissioned officer in the Naval Reserve."

"Pshaw!"

"And heir to a large estate."

"That is doubtful, Clara; his brother is the heir.  I know there is
much common sense in that little head of yours, and I wish you to
bring it to bear upon the present question.  This intimacy is
unseemly.  Good heaven! what would society say of it?"

"Society! how I do hate that word, Papa!"

"Indeed!  You are young and inexperienced, and it is for me to
consider that which may become insolence on his part, and folly on
yours."

Never before had her father spoken with such severity of tone, and
the soft eyes of Clara filled with unseen tears.

"Ours is a levelling age certainly; but this intimacy carries the
game rather far.  It is outrageous!" he continued, nursing his
annoyance, and warming with it.

"But he bears our name, and why may we not know him?  If he is a
kinsman----"

"Kinsman!" exclaimed her father, with growing anger, as he recalled
the visit of Mr. De Murrer; "the devil! don't speak thus; and as for
the mere matter of a name, one would think you were an old Scotsman
of a hundred years ago, rather than an English girl of the nineteenth
century!"

"I only think of what I owe him, Papa," urged Clara, greatly
apprehensive that Derval's name would now be struck off the visitor's
list--but prudence forbade such an order as yet.

"It is possible you may think too much," continued Lord Oakhampton,
greatly ruffled; "but remember, Clara, that this young man is as much
out of your world as one of yonder boatmen in the bay!"

"Do not suppose, dear Papa, that I will ever do aught unbecoming your
daughter.  I have always done my best to please you," she added, as
her graceful figure bent over him, and a white arm stole round his
neck, while her sweet face grew almost softer in expression, as she
caressed him.

But she now discovered the truth of the German proverb, "Speech is
silver, silence is gold," and knew to her infinite mortification,
that by her first remark on Derval's appearance, and her attempted
defence of their friendship, she had thoroughly awakened the
suspicions of her father, of whose old hostility to the Hamptons of
Finglecombe she knew nothing; and the results were that her liberty
was much more circumscribed than it had been.  There was no more
boating on the bay, and Miss Sampler was for ever on duty now.
Forbidden to think of him, she cherished the idea all the more.  To
her, Derval, honest, manly, straightforward, and single-hearted,
seemed worth all "the white-handed glittering youth" she had yet met
with; and thus it was in vain that her father urged that he did not
and never would belong to her class in society--even by thought,
culture, and education; but, in some of the latter premises, his
lordship was in error.  Yet, too keenly aware of what the claims were
that Derval, or interfering friends for him, might urge to the title
he held, he could neither forbid him his house nor request that he
would cease to address Miss Hampton.

To Derval the idea of these claims never occurred; he felt that there
was a change now, that he saw Clara more seldom, and never alone.
Whether this was her own desire, or that of her father, he could not
tell; he only knew that the first stirrings of a deeply-absorbing
love were quickening his pulses and thrilling in his veins.  He had
heard of the desire of the moth for the star, and felt himself
somewhat akin to that foolish insect indeed.  She was the daughter of
a peer, and in the fulness of that thought, and the greatness of his
passion, he forgot that he might yet be a peer himself!

Time was passing on--day followed day, and he missed the sweet
companionship sorely.  Her face was ever before him in all its soft
beauty and variety of expression; her voice seemed ever in his ear,
as he conned over her utterances, and recalled her attractive and
pretty little modes of manner.  He was never weary of watching the
roof that covered her, the windows she might be looking from, or the
walks where he might chance to meet, even to see her; and he
resolved, that come what might, he would not go away without
declaring how he loved her, without telling her the old, old story,
that was first told in Eden; and that he would never forget her, and
never love another.

The time for his departure was drawing near now, and thus he was a
prey to the most terrible anxiety.

He felt that the relief of words he must have, or his heart would
sink.  So much had this strong passion become a part of himself, that
he felt and thought that he would rather be dead and buried with her,
than that she should become the wife of another.  And yet such
separations come to pass every day, and no one dies of them, so far
as the world knows.

He had gathered courage from what he could read in her eyes, more
than once, when he had met her and her chaperone, and they had
lingered together, talking the merest commonplaces, but with their
hearts very full indeed, and Miss Sampler keenly observant of their
words and actions.  Thus he had resolved that there should be no
mistake when the opportunity came, and come it did one day, most
unexpectedly, when he met her suddenly, alone too, and then, all the
world seemed to stand still!

It was in one of the last places where he would have thought to meet
her unattended--at the Nutcracking Rock, an ancient logan-stone,
which rests, as it were, upon a keel, so that a push rolls it from
side to side, at each vibration being arrested by a stone, against
which it knocks.  Hence its name, and it stands in a wooded and
solitary place, near the shore of the bay, covered with golden moss
and surrounded by dwarf oak-trees and hawthorns.

She was seated on a camp-stool, and so intent on her work of
sketching it, that he drew near her unperceived, with his heart
beating almost painfully, and every fibre tingling with love and joy.
His step aroused her, she looked round; a faint exclamation escaped
her, and she dropped her pencil.

"Mr. Hampton, you here?"

"Thank heaven that I find you as I do, alone, Clara," said he,
picking up the fallen pencil, and kneeling on one knee by her side
after he did so.  They were eye to eye now, and both were greatly
agitated.

"Alone, Clara," said he, taking her unresisting hand, "how are you
here alone?"

"Miss Sampler has just left me; did not you meet her?"

"No, I came by the beach."

"And what were the wild waves saying?" she asked, smiling honestly
and fondly down on his upturned face.

"They seemed to sing to me of love and you, Clara," he answered, in
the same joyous manner, and drawing her towards him he kissed her
tenderly, passionately, and there was no need for declaring the love
that filled his heart and trembled on his lips, and yet he did so in
words that filled her heart with mingled joy and fear--joy, for they
were such as no young girl could have heard unmoved when addressed to
herself--and a great fear, as she thought of her father, and all his
words flashed on her memory.  She grew pale, and even when Derval's
kisses were pressed upon her cheek in that sequestered place, she
glanced round her fearfully.

"And you love me in return, Clara, my own Clara?" he murmured,
caressing her tenderly after their first incoherences were over.

"Yes, oh yes, Derval, I love you!" she replied.

"It is said to be fortunate for us, that the future is a sealed
book," said he, drawing her head and face caressingly into his neck
and his breast, "yet I should like to have known that the little girl
whose life I saved in Bermuda was to be my wife--my own darling
wife--in the years to come!"

_His wife!_

The sweet assumption made her tears flow fast, and hot and bitter
tears they were.  The intensity of his love had touched her, and
delighted her heart; but these words recalled her father's remarks
and injunctions, and even while Derval spoke and she responded, while
joining with him in the delirious joy of the present, she had the
chilling and terrible fear, that this great love and his suit would
prove--all nonsense in the future, and never come to anything!

I was an awful conviction or fear to have at such a moment, and the
intensity of her agitation, her sobs and tears, attracted the
attention of Derval.

"My own darling," he asked, inquiringly, "why all those tears?"

"My father, Derval,"

"You dread his opposition--so do I; but I would not have him ashamed
of me, if you are not--my own love!"

"Derval--we leave this for Paris to-morrow morning.  In the joy of
seeing you, I almost forgot it," she continued, sobbing heavily.

"To-morrow--oh heavens, Clara!  And I! next day for a ship--a few
days whole seas will be between us!  We sail for the Cape."

"It is awful to think, Derval, that we may pass out of each others'
lives, and be as if we never met--never known each other!"

"Why--how?" he asked regarding her anxiously.

"What can such a secret and forbidden love as ours, with such a
separation, lead to? a separation without a place or period for
meeting again, and without a means of hearing of each others' lives,
safety, or happiness."

As she spake her pearly teeth were set, and there came into her face
something of the expression that Derval had seen it wear in the boat
on the last occasion, force of character and strength of resolution,
young though she was.

As the reader may conjecture, the sketch of the famous Nutcracking
rock was never finished.

"I shall ever thank heaven for the impulse that sent me to meet you
to-day, darling Clara," said he, as they reached the spot at which
they would be compelled to separate.  "We must, and shall, meet again
when I return, for I shall seek you out, wherever you are, and we
must think of each other every day and every hour.  Till then--oh, my
love, till then!"

Much more was said, brokenly and incoherently, and they lingered so
long, that at last she had to leave him, blinded in tears, and with
one long and clinging kiss they parted, as so many lovers have done
before, and will do so again.

They had exchanged rings and locks of hair in the most orthodox
fashion.  It was arranged that Rookleigh should be the medium through
which their correspondence should be conducted, their letters being
mutually, if necessary, sent under cover to him.  There could be no
harm in their hearing of each other secretly, they thought, and
deemed such an institution necessary for their happiness--their very
existence, indeed; for both were rash, young, loving, and
enthusiastic, and both, too, were somewhat ignorant of the
conventional ways of the world; and to Rookleigh now they both
mutually looked for succour in the great love that bound their hearts
together.

Though his heart was weary with the keen sorrow of their separation,
Derval felt full of bright hope for the future--that hope which
furnishes all our Chateaux in Espagne, or in the air--"hope that
lends us alabaster bricks and golden mortar to build these castles
withal; hope that turns the hue of the stalest loaf into the richest
plum-cake, and the smallest of beer into the mellowest of Burgundy."

As if chance were already beginning to favour him, Derval, who did
not, and never would visit the villa at Finglecombe, on returning to
the hotel found his brother Rookleigh awaiting him there.

"You asked me the other day if I would do you a favour, Rook," said
he, "and I promised to do it--though I was in a great hurry."

"Yes--Miss Hampton was waiting for you on the beach.  I saw you
meet--well?"

"You must in turn do a favour for me--and I am sure you will, old
fellow!" added Derval, and he placed a hand affectionately on his
brother's shoulder, feeling at that moment, in the great joy of being
loved by Clara, that he forgave him everything, and could love him
too.

He then related to Rookleigh much that had passed between himself and
Clara--told of their secret engagement--secret, at least, as yet;
showed her engagement-ring, but failed to see the sneer of
Rookleigh's lip, as he kissed it with what the latter deemed idiotic
ardour; and in the end, begged him to be the medium through whom
their correspondence was to be conducted; and to this Rookleigh,
affecting demurrage, ultimately consented, for which he was
extravagantly thanked and well-nigh embraced by Derval, who said:

"And now, Rook, dear old boy, what is the favour you wanted of me--in
what can I serve you?"

An unfathomable expression stole over the face of Rookleigh at that
moment, and his pale green shifty hazel eyes perhaps never looked so
shifty.  Skilfully veiled hatred, malice, and anticipated triumph
were mingling there; but Derval, whose heart and thoughts were
utterly strangers to passions such as these, could little have
conceived they were so near him.

We have said that both Mrs. Hampton and Rookleigh resented Derval's
intimacy with Lord Oakhampton, and the revengeful feeling of the
half-brother eventually took a very remarkable form.

Seeing that Rookleigh seemed embarrassed, Derval pressed him to say
what favour he required of him.

"I want a thousand pounds sorely on loan just now," said Rookleigh,
in a very measured voice, while avoiding his brother's eye; "I know
you have more than double that sum lying at your bankers, as you have
scarcely drawn a penny of what our good father left you."

"He left me so little and you so much, Rook, that I marvel greatly
you can want any more, especially from a poor devil like me; but you
are heartily welcome to the thousand; and as for dear Clara's
letters--"

"They will be fully attended to.  Thank you, dear Derval, I knew you
would assist me if you could.  My monetary annoyance is a very
temporary one indeed."

"There you are--and welcome!" exclaimed Derval, as with a dart of his
pen he filled up a cheque and handed it to his brother, who, after
carefully placing it in his pocketbook, drew forth a document of
somewhat portentous aspect.

"Why--what is this?" said Derval.

"Knowing that you would give me the money, and that it would be
necessary to give you some admission or receipt for it, I had this
prepared, as time is short."

"True, I must be off in twenty-four hours.  But what is the meaning
of all this, Rook?  The cheque is a crossed one--and I can trust
you--can you not trust yourself?"

Rookleigh's rather pale face was crossed by a blush as he said--

"We never know what may happen, and if you are to marry Clara
Hampton, as I hope you will, all the money you can scrape together
will be necessary."

"But, man alive! what is all this you have written here?" exclaimed
Derval; "it looks like a title-deed--a marriage settlement--or a bill
in chancery.  Surely all this raggabash is not necessary between you
and me!"

"For legal purposes it is--you, as a sailor, are ignorant of the
ridiculous tautology of legal composition; but if you will affix your
ordinary signature, witnessed by me, in these two places, without
troubling you to read it, we shall post it to old De Murrer for
security in his hands."

"All right, old fellow, I'll do anything you like but read over all
that rigmarole," replied Derval, who dashed off his signature at the
places indicated, and the document was enclosed in an envelope,
addressed to their mutual agent at Gray's Inn for preservation, and
placed in the usual receptacle at the hotel for letters to be posted.

There is no doubt that it was extremely culpable and negligent of
Derval to sign that document as he did, without once troubling
himself by an examination of its contents and nature--all the more so
was he culpable, from the past knowledge he had of Rookleigh's
general character; but his correspondence with Clara was uppermost
then in his thoughts; and when the half-brothers parted for the
night, there came into Rookleigh's face a diabolical smile, and he
laughed, as he took his homeward way muttering to himself--

"How easily that fool allowed himself to be chiselled out of
everything; but he is a sailor, ignorant of land life, for sailors go
round and round the world but never into it!"

And again he laughed loudly.

On the morrow, the pretty villa at Bayview was tenantless; the shrine
was empty, so Derval gladly welcomed the hour that took him from
Finglecombe, and the change of scene and occupation that came with it.

Lord Oakhampton had seen of late the preoccupation of his daughter's
thoughts, and knew the cause thereof.  Hence this sudden Parisian
trip; after which a season in London would, he hoped, find another
whose presence might obliterate what he deemed to be a foolish, a
girlish, and _outré_ fancy for Derval Hampton.

Ere the _Amethyst_ sailed, the latter wrote to her under cover to
Rookleigh, who was to discover Lord Oakhampton's address, and
contrive some means of having it delivered.

The letter, full of passionate love and longing, of the tender little
incoherences in which all lovers indulge, and many prayerful hopes
for the future, duly reached the hands of his brother; but it was
fortunate for Derval's peace of mind that he did not see the strange
and horrible smile that crept over the face of Rookleigh as he
_perused_ it, and then tossed it into the fire.

The latter was the receptacle of most of its successors, and of
Clara's too.




CHAPTER V.

"DEEPER THAN E'EN PLUMMET SOUNDED."

Derval was back to his old work on the sea, but now it had lost all
zest, and even the love for and hope of adventure had gone out of
him.  His whole soul and existence seemed to centre in the image of
Clara, and his mind was never weary of dwelling upon it, and all the
minutiæ of his late sojourn at Finglecombe, and all that had come of
it.

She loved him; he had the dearest and sweetest assurance of that, and
they were engaged--solemnly engaged; but how, and when was the end to
be?  Their future was painfully vague!  He could scarcely hope for
her father's consent, and without it he feared that he would never
win Clara for his wife, as he knew, but too well, that though the
name and blood were the same, their relative positions in life--in
that "society" in which she moved--were different, far apart, and
that--as yet--he had no place therein.

His imagination was fertile in the art of self-torment; and still
more did it become so, as time and distance increased between him and
their parting hour and parting place; and, after skirting the Bay of
Biscay, that turbulent corner of the seas where, at times, all their
storms seem gathered together, the _Amethyst_ shaped her course
towards Madeira.

On the lone sea by day and in the silent watches of the starry night
of what could he think but _her_, and the new and hitherto unknown
emotion she had kindled in his heart!

He hailed with joy and anxiety the Pico Ruivo as it rose from the
sea, and the _Amethyst_ ran into the roads of Funchal, where she
lay-to while Joe Grummet went ashore for any ship letters that might
have come ahead of them by the steam-packet.

Letters there were for the Captain, Harry Bowline, and others on
board, but not one for him, and his spirit began to fall.  He strove
hard to console himself with the doctrine of chances and mischance,
and hoped letters might await him at Ascension or the Cape of Good
Hope.

Rough old Joe Grummet, a shrewd observer, especially of those for
whom he had a regard, saw how his countenance changed when the
letters were distributed and none appeared for him.

"I was sorry to see you so disappointed, sir," said Joe, as they
walked the deck together that night, after the Pico Ruivo had sunk
into the sea, "but I think it is often better not to get letters when
in blue water, for we can't amend evil things then, as we might when
ashore; and I had a shipmate, who lost his life through getting
one--and out of the smallest post-office in the whole world."

"Where is that, Joe?"

"It is a barrel that swings from the outermost rock of the sheer
mountains that overhang the Straits of Magellan, right opposite to La
Tierra del Fuego.  Every ship passing opens it to place in letters or
take them out, and undertakes their transit, if possible.  It hangs
there at an iron chain, washed, beaten, and battered by wind and
storm; but no post-office, even in London, is more secure from
robbers.  Well, this poor fellow laid well out on the foretopsail
yard, while the ship was thrown in the wind, to see what letters were
in the barrel.  There was but one, and it was for himself.  It was
from his wife, but was sealed with black.  Sitting outside the yard
he read it; then a cry escaped him, and falling into the sea between
the ship and the rocks he was seen no more.  The letter fluttered aft
to where I stood near the taffrail.  It told poor Bill of his
mother's death, months and months before, and the shock had been too
much for him.  But you have come back to the _Amethyst_ sorely
changed, surely Mr. Hampton?"

"How, Joe?"

"Why--all the fun and cheeriness are quite gone out of you."

"They should not, Joe, as there is no reason therefor.  But were you
ever in love, Joe?"

"Bless my heart, many and many times, as long as my pay lasted, and I
had to come aboard again."

"Ah!  Joe," said Derval, laughing, "I fear you don't know what love
is."

"Don't I, though!" exclaimed old Grummet, as he bit a quid off the
twist of pigtail that was always in his right-hand pocket.  "I often
boast myself as one of the not-to-be-done squadron of the Royal Naval
Reserve, Mr. Hampton; yet I am always done brown when I am on shore,
which is the reason I generally stick close to the ship, as one can't
fall in love when in blue water and the anchor's catted."

"Joe, the love I mean is the merging of your whole existence in that
of another; placing every hope and wish on the will of another;
living a glad, wild, feverish dream, with the strange sense that
without that other all life is worthless."

"Well, I'm blessed!  On that other, as you call her, I have too often
spent every 'tarnal penny, and come to grief in the end, and found
myself toeing a line before the beak.  No, no! love ain't for me now;
and for you, perhaps, it as well you didn't get any letters, for
perhaps your girl may have slipped from her moorings and gone foreign
with some other fellow."

Derval laughed at Joe's phraseology, but said, "This is perhaps my
last trip, Joe, and if I leave the ship I hope to see you a mate of
her."

"Mate--no, no, Mr. Hampton; I ain't used to the luxuriance of a
cabin, where knives and forks and tea-cups is used; and where the
grog-tot, the bread-barge, and the mess-kid ain't known."


The wind was fair, the weather delightful, and the _Amethyst_ in due
time crossed the equator.

"Let me be patient, let me be patient!" sighed Derval, when the
volcanic peaks of Ascension, the rendezvous of our African squadron,
came in sight; and the _Amethyst_, having sprung one of her topmasts,
ran in to refit.  Letters for her came off in a Government boat.
There were some for nearly every man on board save Derval, whose
anxiety was fast becoming painful.

As at Madeira, he wrote and left a passionate and appealing letter to
Clara, under cover to his brother, and sailed in hope for the Cape.
Hope; he could not abandon that!  Was Clara ill? had Rookleigh
mismanaged their correspondence? or had Lord Oakhampton discovered
and intercepted all their letters?  Clara could address letters to
the ship--letters which would follow him all over the world; but he
remembered that his movements were somewhat unknown to her, and
gathered a little mental relief from the idea.  But from what did the
silence of Rookleigh arise?  He might at least write and state that
he had no letters to enclose!

Why did she never write to him? he was incessantly asking himself.
Where were the fondly promised letters that Rookleigh was to transmit
to him, in exchange for those transmitted to him for her--passionate
letters, expressing all the complete and wild abandonment of his
heart and soul to an earthly love, to which he had given up all that
God had given him.

Times there were when already he began to have strange and terrible
doubts of her.  Yet, why had she been so sweet, so kind, so loving in
her manner to him, if she was but luring him into misery and
disappointment?  She could not be so cruel--his very life was in
those little white hands of hers--hands that he had so often covered
with kisses.  Then he thrust these aching thoughts aside, and hoped
and trusted that time would unravel and explain all; but as yet a
black cloud, a pall, seemed to have come between him, his past
existence, and Clara!

In the life he knew she must lead in the gay world, where she
participated in all that fashion, wealth, and rank could surround her
with, was she forgetting him? would be his tormenting thought anon;
and had what he deemed a mutual love been to her but a sea-side
romance, a summer flirtation?  Oh! what was _he_, he would mutter,
that she, a peer's daughter, in her beauty and her bloom, should
remember him?

If true to him, at all risks and hazards, even of her father's anger,
she should have written to him; and passing over Rookleigh, at the
same risks and hazards, he should have written direct to her, and
ended his cruel anxiety if possible; but he knew not her address, or
whether she had returned from Paris to England.

"I thought that I had too many reasons for being happy," said he, "a
sure sign of grief to come--of sorrow close at hand."

At last, after a voyage (including her delay at Ascension) of more
than two months, the _Amethyst_ hauled up for Table Bay, came to
anchor, and the boats came off from Cape Town.

"At last, at last--surely now!" exclaimed Derval as a letter was
given him, and he opened it with trembling hands.  It was from
Rookleigh, in answer to one he had written from Madeira, saying that
"Miss Hampton had never sent a single letter for transmission," and
nothing more.

What had happened?  What did this cruel mystery mean?

He wrote her one cold and brief letter, almost a farewell, under
cover to Rookleigh, and then an illness and fever came upon him while
the ship lay at Cape Town, and through the long days and nights
there, he lay in his little cabin, almost mad with his mental
misery--a misery athwart which there came no gleam of light or hope;
and when next he came on deck, after many weeks of illness, he found
that the _Amethyst_, instead of returning to England, had been
freighted for Batavia under Captain Talbot, and was working out of
Table Bay, and heading eastward for the Indian Ocean!

Thus it would be long before he should see or hear of Clara again,
and learn the worst that fate had in store for him.

How little could he imagine, that all _he_ was suffering--the keenest
pangs of doubt, anxiety, sorrow, and disappointment--were suffered by
Clara.  Ignorant of his precise address and whereabouts, the poor
girl wrote to him in secrecy again and again--wrote to him lovingly,
then despondently, and anon with surprise and upbraiding, under cover
to Rookleigh, posting her epistles with her own hand, and trusting
none other--posting them with a prayer on her lips; and to the
recipient--the supposed medium of their love affair--the mutual
correspondence proved a source of supreme merriment, and even to his
mother too; and in the end the fire received it all.

At last Clara knew not what to think; she could but wait and hope,
but ceased to use her pen.  The conviction that she had
stooped--actually condescended--in the acceptance of his love, added
to the poignancy of what felt, and filled her, at times, with
indignation at conduct so singular and unwarrantable.

Fear of Derval's vengeance, if his duplicity ever came to light, the
malevolent Rookleigh had none; but he laughed curiously when he
thought of the folly of which his sailor brother had been guilty in
signing the unread document!  And as for the loss of his lady-love,
"Derval," he thought with a chuckle, "will no doubt take to poetry,
and writing sonnets on female inconstancy."

A somewhat unexpected turn was given to the then state of the affair,
by Lord Oakhampton once more taking up his abode temporarily at
Bayview, in Finglecombe, the saline air of which he rightly or
wrongly--for our story it matters little which--conceived to be
beneficial to his health.  This to Clara was most distasteful, as the
entire locality was--for her--full of associations of the past, that
the sooner she forgot the better for her own happiness.

It was about this time that Derval's last letter from Clara, written
before his illness at the Cape, came to the hands of Rookleigh, and
conceiving, from the animus of that in which it was enclosed, it
might seem to widen the breach between the lovers, he, by the
assistance of little hot water to moisten the envelope, made himself
master of the contents, and adding a bitter postscript in imitation
of Derval's writing, he reclosed it, and, aware that Lord Oakhampton
was absent in London, resolved to deliver it in person, and thus
achieve, perhaps, an introduction to Clara.

Inspired by a new and very remarkable scheme, he repaired to Bayview
Villa, and sending up his card, was ushered into the drawing-room.

The apartment was a double one, divided by an archway, in which hung
curtains of blue silk, edged with silver lace, and festooned partly
with white silk cord and tassels.  There was a sound, the rustling of
a dress in the inner room; but at first Rookleigh saw only a white
hand and arm--an arm so taper round and marvellously beautiful that
he had never before seen anything like it.  A diamond bracelet
clasped the wrist.  The hand slightly parted the curtains--for Clara
was there, with his card in her hand, striving to still the painful
beating of her heart.

Then her whole figure appeared: a girl tall, slender, perfect in
grace and symmetry, her dark violet eyes full of earnest inquiry, the
sweet lips and mignonne face, all expressive of it too.  Lovely,
dainty, and refined, Clara Hampton stood before him.

Would she offer him that lovely hand, permit him to touch it? was his
first thought; but in a second more it was placed confidingly within
his own; while Clara, who blushed deeply at first, now grew pale as
the new-fallen snow.

Never before had he stood in the presence of a girl so quietly
patrician in bearing and appearance.

"Mr. Rookleigh Hampton?" said she, glancing at the card, and with
enforced calmness of tone and manner.

"Derval's brother," replied the traitor, and no other introduction
was necessary, though at the mention of Derval's name, he could see
how anxiety mingled with _hauteur_ in her sensitive lips and eyes.

"You are, of course, aware of the arrangement my brother made
about--about your letters?" said Rookleigh.

"You sent him all mine?" asked Clara in a breathless voice.

"All--and I have one here for you--whether a reply, or not, I cannot
say."

"Only one!"

"The first and only one," replied Rookleigh, who, with all his
effrontery and duplicity, felt that he never before stood in such a
presence, and could scarcely remember how he answered her; for his
mind was filling fast with admiration, his heart beat fast, and his
brain seemed to burn.

"A letter from Derval at last!  His first letter too--yet it would
explain!" were her first ideas.  "Be seated, Sir, and for a moment or
two, pray do excuse me."

She retired back beyond the silk hangings, and rapidly made herself,
more than once, mistress of the contents of that letter, one of
coldness, brevity, and farewell--farewell without further
explanation--a letter the strange tenor of which startled and
bewildered her.

Clara's agitation and confusion were excessive; but sorrow succeeded
to surprise in her heart, and indignation to sorrow.

"All is over and ended between your brother and myself, Mr.
Rookleigh," said she, with a painful swelling in her slender white
throat.

"His letter displeases you?" asked Rookleigh, scarcely knowing what
to say, and feeling his heart for a moment fail him.

"Read it," said she, haughtily.

He scarcely required to do so, yet he affected to peruse it, and then
knit his narrow brows.

"How cold this letter is! but in it there lurks some mystery," said
he.

"What mystery, Sir?"

"I know not--I only know that above all things the human heart is
deceitful!"

After a pause, during which both remained silent, and Clara had
nervously, half unconsciously, crushed and crumpled up the odious and
disappointing note--for it was scarcely even a letter--in her small
and tremulous hand, Rookleigh proceeded to make apologies for the
strange conduct of his unworthy brother, and to express his own pain,
shame, sorrow, and so forth, in terms well chosen and uttered.

"He is peculiar," he added, "always was so; thus his oddity of
disposition caused him to be sent to sea.  I can assure you, my dear
Miss Hampton, that he never got on well with the mother or me, or
with anyone else, in fact.  Then, sailors will be sailors, Miss
Hampton, and are said to have loves in every port."

He continued to linger and utter his regrets, till the silence of
Clara indicated that she was weary of his presence and desired to be
left alone--alone to her own reflections and misery--and the young
squire of Finglecombe bowed himself out, well pleased with his
morning's work, and resolved that this should not be his last visit
to Bayview Villa.

He was well aware that Clara Hampton, though just turned eighteen,
had been the queen of the last season in London, and that though
other queens were there as proud and pure and marvellously fair, yet
there was none who apparently had remained so unspoiled by the homage
offered.  Flattery left her untouched; and beautiful and nobly born
though she was, no weekly journal yet dared to make her portrait an
inducement to purchasers, and no photo of her appeared in any London
shop-window to court the comments, admiration, or ribaldry of every
passing "cad" or ruffian.

It has been said--with what truth we know not--that no idle man can
resist the temptation of seeking to fascinate a handsome girl, while
at the same time eclipsing another man.  Thus, could Rookleigh have
any compunction about eclipsing that half-brother of whose proper
position in the family he was so jealous, and whom he had been so
studiously reared by his mother to view with a rancorous and most
unholy hate?

Certainly not, and to this amiable end, Rookleigh resolved to leave
no means untried to introduce himself to Lord Oakhampton.

Chance meetings--chance apparently--in the railway train, and
elaborate civilities proffered by Rookleigh, the offers of cigars,
periodicals, and so forth, led to an exchange of words; and though
the peer was unpleasantly struck by the young man's name, and then
knew precisely who he was, for certain cogent legal reasons he deemed
it wise and well to be civil to him, and an invitation to Bayview
followed--an invitation which Rookleigh was not slow to accept; and
soon, by making himself useful in fifty different ways, he became
then a regular sea-side visitor; though, as the brother of Derval,
his welcome was of a somewhat mingled kind by both father and
daughter.

Mrs. Hampton was intensely gratified by this unexpected intimacy, of
which, however, by failing health, she was, perhaps luckily, unable
to avail herself.

To Rookleigh the idea did occur at times, as to how he was to account
to Derval for the non-transmission of Clara's letters for him to the
ship, the owners, or their agents abroad?

Well--that was a matter for future consideration; meantime he had the
signed bond, and that laid Derval at his mercy!

The lovers were meanwhile beginning to think--nay, to be
assured--that their worst fears were becoming realised; Clara deeming
that Derval, as his brother had alleged, was "a very sailor"; and he,
that Clara was only true to the instincts of her cold-blooded class,
and had already forgotten him, or cast him off, for some new, richer,
and titled object; and Rookleigh rubbed his long lean hands, and
puckered up his green eyes with quaint delight, as the plot seemed to
thicken.

Clara had never striven even to like him, though the brother of that
Derval she had loved so well--nay, loved in secret still.  She saw
the base metal in his composition, and always detected a something in
the tone of his voice, and in the expression of his face, that roused
an undefinable emotion of distrust, as belying in some way the ease
and nonchalance of manner he affected.

"We are a kind of cousins, you know, Miss Hampton," said he one day,
as he hung over her at the piano.

"I do not know that we are," she replied coldly.

"Permit me to explain to you the degree," and he proceeded to do so
with extreme accuracy, as he had just been studying the matter with
Mr. De Murrer, affecting to act in the interest of his absent
brother, but in reality for his own selfish purposes.  But she only
laughed aloud, and said:

"It is rather remote."

"It would not be thought so, in Scotland."

She remembered her father's reply on a similar occasion, and merely
shrugged her shoulders.  Had Derval claimed the kindred blood, her
view of it might have been different.

The poor girl's heart was ever beating with "a vague unrest" she
could well understand, but had a difficulty in concealing and acting
a part to those around her, to the watchful eyes of her father
especially, and he began to wonder whether he had acted wisely in
opening his house to Rookleigh Hampton.

The latter now learned that the _Amethyst_ had sailed for Batavia,
which would ensure, even if she returned direct to England, an
absence of at least eight months on the part of Derval--eight months,
of which Rookleigh made, as we shall show, a terrible use.

"Sailed for Batavia--sailed for Batavia!" he repeated.  Fate was
playing into his hands indeed, for long ere Derval could return, the
game would be his own!

So "deeper than ever plummet sounded," was the deep villany of
Rookleigh Hampton.




CHAPTER VI.

A CRUSHED HEART.

In detailing plot and counterplot, cunning and selfishness, doubt,
despair, and no small agony of spirit, we have much to compress in
the latter pages of this our history.

As the squire of Finglecombe, Rookleigh was, in every way, a more
eligible _parti_ than his sailor brother; thus, confident in having
eventually the countenance of Lord Oakhampton, the former cared very
little about the opposition of Clara, his whole anxiety being to play
his cards well, and have her completely in his power, ere the return
of Derval upset his plans, and this unexpected voyage to Batavia gave
him far more time to do so than he could at first have hoped for.

Into his nefarious schemes his mother entered _con amore_.  Derval
removed or circumvented in any way, _her_ son would marry the heiress
of Lord Oakhampton, and eventually might succeed to the title.  Every
scruple died in her heart!

"Do you make any progress with her, Rookleigh?" that amiable lady
asked one day.

"None--as yet," he answered sulkily.

"Why, dear?"

"She is always brooding over Derval."

"Though all letters have been intercepted?"

"Yes; but I have plenty of time, however, before he returns--if he
returns at all."

"At all!  Why not get up a rumour that he is drowned--or married?"

"Not a bad idea, Mother; anyway I shall be sure to succeed," replied
Rookleigh, laughing, with something of the contemptuous confidence of
youth, and ignorance of the world.

Unaware of the secret impulses that were working, Clara disliked the
apparent intimacy between her father and young Rookleigh Hampton.
She disliked his constant visits and something in the bearing he was
assuming towards herself.  The little toleration she had for him at
first, as Derval's brother, passed away with the hope of ever hearing
of Derval more, and she had--she knew not why--a secret antipathy to
Rookleigh.

The latter felt this, and all his attempts to gain her confidence,
even to engage her in a pleasant conversation came to nothing.

Coming upon her one day as she sat on the beach, she seemed so
unconscious of his approach, that he came close to her side quite
unnoticed.

Then she looked up at him and bowed, but her face scarcely wore the
semblance of a smile as she did so.

"Of what were you thinking?" he asked, as he lay down on the pebbles
by her feet.

"Nothing," she replied curtly.

"How smooth and pleasant the water looks--will you let me row you out
a little way?"

"No, thanks," she replied almost with asperity.

"You always seem to--to doubt me, Miss Hampton."

"You think so?" said she, with her lip curling slightly.

"I am sorry to say that I feel it instinctively."

"I do not doubt your honour, at all events."

"My truth, then?" said he, colouring.

"Are they not the same thing?"

"Not always--unless I deceive myself.

"You may--but not me," replied the girl, almost sharply, for his
manner worried her, and she rose up.

He grew pale with anger, love, and even hate, curiously mingled, and
thought, as he started to his feet, and walked on by her side, "I'll
crush you yet, my proud damsel!"

After a little pause, he said:

"Whatever you think of me, Miss Hampton, I trust you do not deem me a
worshipper of Mammon?"

Now, as this was precisely what she did think of him, young though he
was, she laughed and replied:

"The conversation is becoming, to say the least of it, peculiar and
personal.  What can it possibly matter to you, how or what I think of
you?"

Dissembling his rage at this contemptuous question, he said:

"It matters much, indeed; all would wish to stand well in your
estimation--and I more than all, Miss Hampton."

"Well--are not most people worshippers of Mammon?"

"More, I hope, worshippers of beauty."

His smile became a leer, and while irritation gathered in her heart,
she said:

"I know nothing of either--I have lived only some eighteen years in
the world, Mr. Hampton.  But why do you cross-question me?" she added
impetuously.

"Pardon me; because to me all your thoughts are of the deepest
interest, and I----"

"I do not understand all this," interrupted Clara, with increasing
annoyance; "but here is our gate, and I must wish you good morning,
Mr. Hampton."

"Good morning."  He lifted his hat and turned away, with a baffled
and angry emotion in his mind, and an expression in his eyes, that,
had Clara seen it, would certainly have startled her; but so far as
she was concerned, sorrow, annoyance, and evil were fated to come
thick and fast now.

Rookleigh's law agents were meanwhile perfecting the evidences of his
own and his brother's claims successively to the title held then by
Lord Oakhampton.  We have already detailed the angry interview
between his lordship and Mr. De Murrer, and the alarm with which it
inspired him; and this emotion was renewed when, from that gentleman,
acting ostensibly in the interest of the absent Derval, but in
reality under the secret pressure of Rookleigh, came a terrifying
legal missive, to the effect that the whole chain of evidence was now
complete and would shortly be laid before the world!

"There is but one way of compromising with the absent heir," wrote
Mr. De Murrer, good-naturedly: "your lordship has no direct heir; Mr.
Derval Hampton, and then his brother, are the next in succession;
thus, if you do not marry again, the claim may take its course after
your demise, if the heirs assent thereto."

"Marry again--and at my years!" thought Lord Oakhampton, bitterly;
"of that there is no danger"; but as he thought of his daughter, the
beads of perspiration started on his brow.  He thought of the mutual
regard his daughter and Derval had for each other; he saw a means of
compromise the lawyer did not think of, and wrote him to that effect,
begging him not to move in the matter until the return of Derval; but
kept his own counsel, and said nothing to Clara on what he deemed
their impending ruin; and his natural _hauteur_ made him shrink from
speaking on the matter, as yet, to Rookleigh Hampton.

The latter continued his visits as usual--the whole impending suit
being supposed to be Derval's; but Clara kept so sedulously out of
his way, that he could not use the opportunities he had, of urging
his regard for her; thus, he left no means untried to win over Lord
Oakhampton to his side.

Old, far beyond his years, in calculating villany, Rookleigh knew
well, that though he might persuade Clara, by a false newspaper
notice, that Derval was dead, the truth or falsity thereof would soon
be proved; he thought it would be better to assure her in some manner
of his supposed perfidy, and hence make her more open to the
proposals of a new suitor, and the dedication of that time to
revenge, which otherwise might be naturally dedicated to grief; and
at Bideford he was not long in discovering one to be his accomplice
in this deceit--a broken-down actress, or rather a dancing-girl
belonging to a travelling troupe, whose acquaintance he had made with
considerable facility about this time.

The girl was pretty, clever, and attractive in appearance, while
destitute of nearly every scruple--so far as conscience was concerned.

"You will do this for me, my dear Sally?" said Rookleigh, as he sat
toying with her over some wine, in one of the inn windows that
overlooked the river and beautiful valley at Bideford.

"Of course I will--like a bird, old fellow, if you pay me," was the
confident reply.

"Pay you--that I will, my pet--and well, too!  You will have to act
the dear, dear little devoted but deserted wife."

"To the life, Rook--to the life."

"Then a hundred pounds shall be yours," said Rookleigh, with
something like a groan, as he deeply loved his money, and the girl
had flatly refused to be his accomplice for less, and received half
the sum in the first instance.

"Then give me a kiss, you dear old fellow, and I will soon earn the
other instalment," said the young lady airily, as she got a vehicle
and drove off at once to Finglecombe, kissing her hand to Rookleigh
as long as he was in view.

We shall soon see the result of their compact.

It was autumn now, the fields were no longer yellow with billows of
golden grain, as the breeze swept over the uplands; the white cups of
the water-lilies had disappeared from pool and pond; the beeches
changed their hue from green to russet, and the oak leaves were
turning red; the evening sun had sunk beyond the waters of the bay,
and Clara, seated alone, in the recess of a window, with an unread
book in her lap, and her eyes fixed dreamily on the deepening shadows
of the land and sea, felt more than usually depressed, when she was
startled by a servant announcing "Mrs. Hampton," and a girl of
somewhat attractive appearance, though rather flippant and nervous in
manner, and somewhat shabbily clad, was ushered in.

Clara's first thought was of Rookleigh's mother, but the years of the
visitor showed she was mistaken.

"You gave the name of Hampton?" said Clara, inquiringly, as her
visitor remained silent.

"Yes, Ma'am--yes, Miss--Mrs. Derval Hampton, I am."

"You--you?" exclaimed Clara, startled and bewildered; "I do not
understand."

"But you soon will," replied the girl, affecting to sob; "if I might
take a seat, Miss--I am weary and faint and ill, and very sick at
heart, too."

Clara trembled very much, though unaware of what all this was to lead
to, but pointed to a chair, on the extreme edge of which the visitor
seated herself, and seemed very far from being at ease.  She was a
little awed by her surroundings; then came an emotion of envy and
anger at Clara for her perfect costume and beauty, her superior
position and supreme purity of aspect, manner, and character; but no
emotion of compunction for the pain she was about to inflict, or of
shame for the deliberate falsehood she was about to tell, came to the
soul of Miss Sally Trix.

"And what may your business be with me?" asked Clara.

"Only to know, Miss, if you have heard of late from my husband, as he
has ceased to write to me?"

Clara felt herself grow sick and pale at this degrading question; but
she asked with much apparent calmness:

"And, pray, who may your husband be, girl, that I should know aught
of him?"

"Mr. Derval Hampton of the ship _Amethyst_, who, I understand,
engaged himself to you, while knowing well that I--his lawful wife,
whom he left to starve--was living!  I don't blame you, Miss," she
continued, weeping to all appearance, for she could act her part well
and professionally, "for you knew no better; but, thank heaven, I
come in time to save you and unmask him!"

There ensued a pause now--but a pause in which Clara could hear the
beating of her heart, and then she asked:

"When, and where, were you married?"

"In London, Miss, and just after his last voyage; Captain Talbot
knows me well, and so does his brother Mr. Rookleigh."

"And why did he leave you?" asked Clara, with a strange and husky
voice.

"Because I am poor; he despised me as soon as he knew you, and used
to go off with you in a boat on the bay, and leave me to break my
heart weeping on the shore; for many a time I saw you both.  For what
was I but a toy to be played with, and cast aside when he was tired
of me; but I am his wedded wife, as this ring and the register can
testify!"

The stroller played her part to perfection, with every word planting
a knife in the heart of the shrinking listener; and deeming that now
she had said and done enough by the few details she threw in to
convince the latter that she had been cruelly deceived, Miss Trix
sobbed heavily, bowed herself out, and quitted Bayview Villa with all
speed, considering that the character she had taken in this "cast"
was--in a monetary sense--the best engagement she had ever made.

Clara sat long in the dusk as if turned to stone, but not a tear
escaped her.  This sudden revelation of Derval's supposed perfidy
could not give her now the pain it might have done in time past; his
conduct had partly prepared her for some such catastrophe as this;
and yet how antagonistic--how unlike his open, gentle, candid, and
earnest outward character, did this accumulation of secret perfidy
seem!

And that tawdrily dressed damsel had declared herself his wife!  _His
wife!_

She recalled the time when that word, as a term of endearment to
herself, had fallen so sweetly on her startled ear; then a bitter,
bitter sense of having been insulted and degraded, was added to her
still more keen sense of utter disappointment in Derval; and to her
guileless and innocent mind, no doubt, no thought of suspicion that
she might be deluded, ever occurred.

"You have had an unexpected visitor, Miss Hampton?" said Rookleigh,
eyeing her pale face keenly next day.

"Yes."

"Ah--so have I, one who has explained all."

"All?"

"My brother's peculiar perfidy, I mean."

"Yes."

"A perfidy for which I blush!  You see that it has been as I
suggested, sailors have entanglements everywhere; but this is rather
more than that--a legal marriage."

"Oh, how dared he--how dared he!" she exclaimed, as she clenched her
little white hands, and the look of firm resolve she would assume at
times stole swiftly into her sweet face.

Some weeks passed on; Rookleigh became impatient for action, and
during these weeks a thoughtful and shadowy expression deepened in
the once bright face of Clara, till it became one of such woeful
fear, that the heart of the father alternately bled with sorrow for
her, and swelled with indignation against Derval.

Every way Clara was a desirable wife, one of whose beauty, at least,
any man might well be proud.  She had inflamed the senses and fired
the vanity of Rookleigh Hampton--not touched his heart, for he had
none, in the way of a lover, to touch; thus, in the pursuit of his
scheme he could think, speak, and act, with consummate coolness of
head and demeanour.

He was well-pleased to find that--thanks to the hints of his
mother--the gossips of Finglecombe, to whom all his actions and
motives were objects of interest, already coupled his name seriously
with that of Clara Hampton.

"Self-contained and well-balanced as she deems herself, this
appearance of Derval's wife _has_ knocked her off her perch!" thought
Rookleigh, with a chuckle, when one day his eye fell on her white
hand, as it rested on the arm of a sofa, and he remarked that the
ring, which he knew Derval had given to her, was no longer on her
engaged finger.  She had removed it--relinquished it--and Rookleigh
took this as an infallible sign that she now concluded all was over
between the absent one and herself.

"Good!" thought he, "good; I'll make my innings now!"

And with a coolness and confidence far beyond his years, he, with the
greatest deliberation, took the earliest opportunity of obtaining
Lord Oakhampton's permission to address his daughter.

"I should like to repair, if I possibly can do so, the evil my
brother has done her, my lord.  I do not understand how it is," said
he, "that I have gone on so far with her without the least
encouragement; but a love for her has grown rapidly upon me, and this
love has become a part of my life--my very existence."

"You are very young to talk in this fashion," said Lord Oakhampton,
uneasily.

"If she would but care for me!" sighed Rookleigh, assuming humility
and timidity.

"It is not my Clara's way to care for any man as he may probably care
for her."

"Have I, then, your lordship's permission to propose?"

"Yes," said Lord Oakhampton, huskily, as he thought of his last
communication from Mr. De Murrer of Gray's Inn, and felt himself, for
the first time, the slave of circumstances, and between the horns of
a dilemma.  Indeed, life--save for the few monetary troubles that
sent him to Bermuda--had gone so smoothly with his lordship that,
until now, when the claim to his coronet began to take a tangible and
legal form, he had no reason to suspect Fate of having the least
intention of treating him scurvily.

And with that invincible effrontery and coolness which were a part of
his nature, Rookleigh, feeling that to a certain extent both father
and daughter were in his power, went at once to the latter, whom he
found in the drawing-room alone; and, no longer abashed as he had
been at first by her rare beauty and stately presence--for stately
and patrician was the presence of Clara, even in her girlhood--he
seated himself by her side, and endeavouring to take and retain her
hand, said, with a nervousness which we thoroughly believe was
assumed:

"Miss Hampton, I have your father's permission to drop the mask I
have worn so long.

"What do you mean?" she asked, with unfeigned surprise.

"To learn, if I can, from your own lips, my fate."

"Your fate, Sir!"

"The fate of the love I bear you.  Miss Hampton--Clara, I love you,
as you must have known ere now--I love you; and in return for mine
will you give me back truth for truth, love for love, trust for
trust, your heart, your life, as fully and freely as I give you mine?"

How glibly he rattled it all out!  He had, probably, learned it out
of some novel, for one might have thought he was in the habit of
proposing every day.

Clara was, at first, astonished and startled, and a thousand things
that she had taken no heed of, or entirely misunderstood, rushed
clearly on her memory now.  Already insulted, mocked, and deluded by
one brother, was she to endure the deliberate and insolent lovemaking
of another?

She rose and looked at him in silence, and with an expression of eye
not favourable to his suit, at all events; but Rookleigh was by no
means abashed, for he was one of those men to whom the apparently
unattainable has a peculiar fascination.  Clara, with difficulty,
restrained her tears.

"Will you pardon me, if I have been presumptuous?" said he.

"On one condition."

"Oh, name it!"

"That you never dare address me in this manner again, and never
intrude upon me more!"

She was sweeping away with a queenly grace, when his voice arrested
her:

"Miss Hampton, you had better think twice over this," said he,
coarsely; "you may not disdain the hand of a man of wealth and
position some day."

Her only reply was to ring the bell,

"Show this gentleman out," said she to the servant who appeared; and
Rookleigh, baffled for the time, retired, with his heart swollen by
passion and resentment.

When next he appeared before Clara, his manner was changed, and her
appearance too.

Her father had set before the astounded girl the claim these
brothers, Derval and Rookleigh Hampton, could advance to his title,
his estates, and all that he possessed.  That with them lay the
power, or alternative, of waiting till his death gave them the means
of quiet accession, or now declaring open war, and sweeping away
wealth, position, rank, influence in Church, in State, and in
society, by degrading him in his old age to the state of the merest
commoner, and having him laughed at as a sham and interloper; and the
gentle heart of Clara died within her, as she beheld her father's
agony, and read some of the communications that had lately come from
Gray's Inn.

"To save me, darling--oh, my darling, you will consent to marry the
young fellow," urged Lord Oakhampton, piteously.

"Yes, Papa," she replied in a whisper, as he withdrew, saying, "God
bless you, darling!" and Rookleigh took his place.

"Your father has placed all this matter plainly before you," said he,
and triumph and passion glittered together in his eyes, as he
surveyed the beauty of the crushed girl, who stood before him now
with downcast face; "there is but one way to escape the evils that
may--nay, must--come upon you and him, and that is a refuge under the
shelter of my name."

"I do not quite understand you, Sir," she replied, with a dazed look
in her eyes.

"As my wife, Clara?"

The words fell distinctly enough upon her ear--distinctly and
deliberately were they uttered.  She did not stir, moan, or weep, but
every drop of blood left her face and lips--even the delicate hands
he grasped so daringly in his; and a strange hunted and desperate yet
defiant expression stole into her beautiful face and remained there.

"Speak, Clara; is your answer that which I venture now to hope and
have a right to expect?"

Endearment was unnatural to him, and his tone and manner were more
those of authority.

Still more deathly pale she grew; but her voiceless lips moved, and
she sunk on the sofa insensible; but from that moment the
arrangements for the wedding were carried forward without delay.

Still more did Fate seem to be playing into the hands of Rookleigh,
when in the shipping intelligence appeared a notice to the effect
that the _Amethyst_ had perished in a storm in the Indian Ocean, and
that a vessel answering her description, with the flag of the Royal
Naval Reserve flying at her gaff-peak, upside down in token of
distress, had been seen to founder; and Rookleigh knew that in the
fulness of time _he_ would be Lord Oakhampton, if he had the grace to
be patient and wait.  Of this catastrophe Rookleigh made no mention
to Clara, whose spirit seemed so low now that nothing could depress
it further.

"Child, child," her father would often say, while caressing her
fondly and with great commiseration, "by your marriage with one or
other of these men I may die in possession of my title
undegraded--undegraded, and at my death, it will go to one or the
other."

"Oh that Derval had been worthy of me!" wailed the girl in her heart.

Old Patty Fripp was gone now to God's Acre, and with her ended
another of "the innumerable simple and honest lives of pain and love,
that are swept away like the dead leaves by the winds of autumn," and
there was no one in Finglecombe now, save Mr. Asperges Laud, to
lament for Derval Hampton, and, aware of Rookleigh's hatred of the
latter, he bewailed his sorrowful destiny in strong language.

"Destiny brings stranger things to pass than ever you dream of," said
Rookleigh, with a grimace of triumph.

"This bearing of yours is shameful!" exclaimed the old curate; "yea,
it is indecent!  What says the gospel of St. John?"

"Nothing that affects me."

"Listen, ingrate!  'He that loveth not, abideth in death.  Whoso
hateth his brother is a murderer.  And you know that no murderer hath
eternal life abiding in himself.'"

But Rookleigh only laughed, and shrugged his shoulders
contemptuously, at St. John and his gospel too.




CHAPTER VII.

NEMESIS.

During the long voyage of nearly three thousand miles to Batavia,
Derval's health and strength came back, but not his old elasticity of
spirit.  He had ever one thought--Clara! and the disappointment and
mortification he endured were keen and bitter.

Now the once happy time of love and lingering at Finglecombe seemed,
indeed, as an unreal mirage, a vanished oasis in the dull grey desert
of his existence.  He ceased now to seek for such explanations of her
silence as his imagination might suggest; though times there were,
when a great terror came over him, that she was dead; yet it was
passing strange, that it was amid the mighty waste of the Indian
ocean he was fated to hear some tidings of her--tidings that were,
certainly, somewhat bewildering.

In latitude 12° south and longitude 100° west, the _Amethyst_ spoke
with a large steamer, from the Red Sea, bound to Australia, and from
which Captain Talbot obtained some London papers, which proved of
keen interest, when so far from home, though they were a month or two
old.

In one of these Derval saw, among fashionable gossip, a marriage as
being on the tapis between "the only daughter of Lord Oakhampton and
young Mr. Hampton of Finglecombe, Devonshire."

Derval could scarcely believe his eyes, as he read this strange
notice again and again.  What did the mystery mean--or to what or
whom did it point?  Could it be some mistake with regard to himself?
Had Lord Oakhampton given to Clara his consent to their engagement.
If so, whence her mysterious silence?  That his half-brother,
Rookleigh, was the person to whom the printed piece of gossip
referred, never once occurred to honest Derval; but whatever it
meant, the date of the paper, some six weeks old; assured him that
she must have been at that period alive and well.  This episode gave
him much food for reflection, and his mind was full of it when the
_Amethyst_ encountered that terrible gale, in which she did not
founder, though another vessel did so within sight of her.

The tornado, for such it was, struck her suddenly, at a time when,
luckily for the ship and all on board, she was running about ten
knots an hour, with all her sails close-reefed, through haze that
thickened fast to warm rain.  The rise of the whirlwind was
instantaneous, and the fore and main topsails were blown clean out of
the bolt-ropes, while a sea was shipped that rolled aft leaving all
on deck knee-deep in water.

The wind was not blowing steadily, but, strange to say, came in a
series of rapid and dreadful gusts, tearing up the sea in such a
fashion that the whole air was a mass of foam as high as the
mainyard.  The _Amethyst_ careened heavily over to her port side,
with her gunnel in the water, and her whole deck afloat with
fragments of sail, ropes, spars, and blocks flying about.  The masts
bent like willow wands, and overhead all the loose rigging flew
wildly about in loops and bights.

In addition to the thunder of the sea, and the deep hoarse bellowing
of the gusty wind, was the crackling and crashing of blocks and
ropes, of sails and of all loose objects, dashed hither and thither,
as wave after wave deluged the deck.

Amid this hurly-burly of the elements, the mysterious paragraph was
ever in Derval's mind, and he thought how hard it would be to perish
now, and never know the meaning of it, or learn whether happiness or
misery were awaiting him at home.

Home! how mighty was the waste of waters he had to traverse ere he
could see its white cliffs again.

So violent was the fury of the storm, that to see the hands aloft
endeavouring to furl or secure the fragments of the topsails, was
calculated to strike terror, as momentarily they seemed in danger of
being whirled off into the air.

Half a mile distant a partly dismasted ship, with the flag of the
Royal Naval Reserve flying reversed at her gaff-peak, could be seen
rising and falling beautifully on the long waves, at one time showing
all her bows and nearly all her side, anon the whole line of her deck
swept of everything from stem to stern, with her drenched crew
clinging to the lower rigging or belaying pins.  One moment she
seemed lifted as if on the summit of a green hill, and the next
seemed sunk in the deep dark valley; but it soon became evident to
the eyes of Captain Talbot, and of all on board the _Amethyst_, that
the buoyancy of the stranger was gone--that she must have sprung a
leak and was settling down in the water with terrible rapidity.

Even if boats could have been hoisted out, it would have been
impossible to have succoured her in such a sea, and ere long, while a
cry came across from her crew, to be echoed by another from that of
the _Amethyst_, she went down by the stern and vanished from sight
with every man on board of her.

"And this might have been our fate!" was the thought of Derval.

The tempest passed away to tear up other oceans, but so agitated was
the water, that the _Amethyst_ pitched and lurched heavily, while a
new set of topsails were bent upon her; all damages made so far good,
and with a steady breeze she began to enter the straits of Sunda.  By
noon next day the south-east point of the Isle of Lombock, with its
great conical peak, eight thousand feet in height, bore S.S.W. on the
starboard bow, and Captain Talbot steered for the strait of Allas,
passed the isle to the westward and that of Sumbawa to the westward,
which is reckoned the best and safest way to the eastward of Java;
and at the beginning of the end of his pilgrimage, after running
along the shore of Madura--the land of cotton, rice, and edible
nests--Derval heard, with a sigh of satisfaction, the anchor let go
in the roads of Batavia, as the ship swung at her moorings, with
thirty-five fathoms and the small bower out, and the hands went aloft
to furl the sails.

In his anxiety to return, to be off again as soon as possible, no man
in the ship equalled Derval in his activity, with regard to getting
the cargo out and another in, and daily he counted the hours while
watching from the deck the lovely low green isles that stud the
beautiful bay, the white-walled city, with its two-and-twenty
bastions--"the Queen of the East," with all her palaces, villas, and
trees, for there the Dutch, true to their national taste, have
covered every available spot with verdure, flowers, and the brightest
foliage.

Finally, the ballast and the last casks of sugar and turmeric were on
board, the hatches battened down, and the boats hoisted in, and after
a month's sojourn, in which he did not spend an idle hour, with a
glow of joy he heard the orders given that were to take the ship out
of the roadstead of Batavia.

"Mr. Grummet," cried the captain, "weather bit the chain forward, man
the windlass, heave and haul!  Mr. Hampton, get the topsails loose--I
see they are furled with reefs."

"Away aloft, my lads," said Derval, "make sail on her with a will."

"Sheet home and hoist away--up with the yards to the caps; let fall
the courses."

Some of the head sails were now roused out of their nettings, the
foretopmast, staysail, and spanker were set, and then she was fully
under weigh.  She went through the water "like a thing of life," and
the flat Batavian shore began to sink.

"Home to England at last--home!" thought Derval as he looked over the
side and saw the waves running under the counter, while he began to
reckon for the thousandth time the probable period the homeward
voyage might consume.

And now to take another homeward glance while that long voyage is in
progress.

It was quite natural now, seeing so much as he did of a girl so
beautiful as Clara, that in Rookleigh, though as yet he had never
dared to attempt to caress her, or do more than take her passive or
unwilling hand in his, the admiration of her person and inclination
for her should increase, as a sense of propriety in her grew upon
him; and also, that the opposition and indifference, with which he
knew her heart was filled, should invite him to stronger efforts to
reach, to win, and control it.

An illness that fell upon her delayed the marriage, which Rookleigh
had duly paragraphed in the papers as forthcoming.  He knew now, that
the ship which had perished near the Straits of Sunda was not the
_Amethyst_; and he knew, moreover, from a visit he paid to her
owners, that she was now on her homeward way, and that there was no
time to be lost!

Yet the season of spring was nearly over before Clara, who had
recovered slowly, at her father's pleasant house in the western
suburbs of London, could face in any way the fate before her,--a fate
that seemed terribly close now, and from which there was no escape
but her own death, or the degradation of her father.

She saw, as part of a terrible phantasmagoria, her wedding dress, and
other dresses, her nuptial trousseau, strewed all over her room, on
her bed, on the chairs, reflected over and over again in the
pier-glasses; her toilet-table littered with ornaments which, though
rare and beautiful, she loathed to wear.

Guests were, of course, invited--a few only, however, as her father
wished the sacrifice (for such he deemed it too) completed very
quietly; the bridesmaids were selected--only four, all in the same
costume, with ornaments the gift of the bridegroom; and to Clara,
their flippant gossip, their conversation for ever on one topic--the
marriage--girls whom she only knew as having met them "in society,"
or little more,--were a source of perpetual worry and irritation to
her.

Rookleigh's mother, now in all her glory, came and went at will,
quite _en famille_ at Lord Oakhampton's house; and she too, with her
pale hazel eyes (the golden tint had faded out of them now), was
another source of irritation to Clara, who looked so white, so
wild-eyed and nervous, that her father, poor man, was crushed in
heart and soul at the sight of her.

She felt like a poor little fly in the toils of some enormous spider.
Never before did she think it was in her gentle nature to loathe any
human being as she loathed this young man, whom she was so shortly to
promise to love, honour, and obey, and with whom she was to go
through the long weary years of the life that lay between to-morrow
and the grave.

And in these years that would inexorably come, what might not his
conduct become, and his treatment of her be, if, in the first flush
of his own youth and of her beauty, he would be thus so unyieldingly
cruel as to make her hand, freedom, and happiness the price of her
father's title and honour, for the little that remained to him of a
long, blameless, and honourable life--for Rookleigh still had the
trump card of playing to win the coronet for his absent brother.

Then a wild gust of horror and dismay would come over her, ever and
anon, when she thought of the coming hour when she must inevitably
and irrevocably become the wife of Rookleigh, and there could be no
escape from him but by death--and she felt that she dared and could
not die--or by flight--a flight that "society" would speedily twist
into a terrible scandal!

The afternoon was drawing into evening--one Clara would never forget,
for Mr. De Murrer was to arrive with the marriage settlements and
contract for signature, and Clara, who had begged to be left for a
little time to herself--her miserable self--was seated in a bay
window lost in bitter thought, looking at the flowers of spring, and
wondering how all would be with her when the time came that they had
faded away and been replaced by those of summer.

Already soft showers had expanded the buds that but a week ago were
closed, the foliage of the brightest green was hiding the dark
branches of the trees.  On all hands she heard the notes of the
birds, and with that tendency which we have to note trifles when in
great tribulation, she found herself watching with curious interest
the bees and the butterflies among the bright parterres of flowers
where the geranium, the heliotrope, the light green leaves of the
echevaria and the cups of the tulips mingled.

All nature looked sweet; but the spring suggested nothing of hope to
Clara, and she was past weeping now, in the bitter conviction that it
availed her nothing; but a shiver passed over her, when she found
that Rookleigh, claiming a bridegroom's privilege, had come upon her
unannounced, and was bending smilingly over her--could he do
otherwise, for the girl was adorably beautiful, and was so nearly now
his own!

"To-morrow, Clara, my darling," said he in a voice of more tenderness
than it was quite his nature or his habit to assume, for true
tenderness was not in him, "think of to-morrow, for long ere this
hour we shall be united for life, and far away together!"

What she replied she never precisely knew, or cared perhaps to
remember, so quickly did certain events come to pass just then.

The stoppage of a vehicle at the front porch, an important ring at
the door bell, was followed by steps in the entrance-hall, and then a
servant announced that "Mr. De Murrer was in the library, where Lord
Oakhampton awaited Miss Hampton and Mr. Rookleigh."

"We are to sign the contract, and so forth, so take courage, Clara,"
said Rookleigh, taking her by the hand, but she shrank on hearing
voices below.

"A stranger is there!" said she timidly.

"Oh, only some fellow he has brought, no doubt, to witness our
signatures; he has delayed unaccountably long, so come, darling."

Clara entered the half-darkened library, pale as snow, and trembling
very much, and saw her father and Mr. De Murrer mutually shaking
hands, and then with--Derval Hampton!

On reaching London, the latter was doubtful at first what to do to
obtain information of Lord Oakhampton's movements, of Clara, of his
brother, and how to gain a clue to all that must have transpired
during his protracted absence.  As money was necessary for him, in
the first place, he drove from the docks to Gray's Inn in quest of
Mr. De Murrer, and at his chambers found that dapper little gentleman
leisurely tying up with red tape a bundle of very legal-looking
documents, which proved to be the contract and marriage settlements
of "Rookleigh Hampton, Esquire, of Finglecombe, and the Honourable
Clara Hampton," and thereby hung a wondrous tale!

It was with something of a sigh in his breast that the worthy little
lawyer tied up these documents, for he disliked and mistrusted the
bridegroom, and was astonished and grieved by the bearing of the
luckless and too evidently repugnant bride.  In all his legal
experience he had met nothing like this.

Warmly indeed did he welcome Derval.

"Just in time, my dear young friend; just in time!" he exclaimed.

"Time for what?" asked the sunburned and weatherbeaten Derval.

"The wedding--of course, you know all about it."

"Wedding--whose?"

"Your brother."

"And--and--" stammered Derval, as the newspaper paragraph flashed
upon his memory.

"Miss Clara Hampton--a good marriage indeed; a strange, but very good
way of compromising the claim to the coronet--a consolidation of
mutual interests, I take it to be; a family compact, quite."

With his eyes fixed alternately on the speaker's face, and then, as
one in a dream, surveying the great square of the Inn, with its
monotonous brick walls and uniform rows of windows, Derval heard all
this with equal astonishment and dismay.

"I am just about to take these papers to Lord Oakhampton's; you will
go with me, of course, and sign them as witness."

"Clara false--so fair, yet so false!" was Derval's bitter thought, as
he threw himself into a chair.

A very few words served to enlighten him as to the conspiracy of
which they had both been the victims--as to the pressure which must
have been put upon the unhappy Clara to save her father's title,
during his life at least, by the sacrifice of herself; and more
exasperating to him was the knowledge that this pressure had been put
upon her by Rookleigh, while acting nominally in the interests of an
absent brother; and he knew in a moment that Rookleigh--the medium of
their correspondence--must, for his own nefarious ends, have
effectually suppressed it!

"And now, as we are on this unpleasant subject," said the lawyer,
opening a drawer and taking therefrom a paper, "what was the meaning
of this mysterious document that Rookleigh framed and you signed?"

"It referred, I understood, to a sum of money I lent him."

"Of what folly you were guilty! _he_ should have signed an
acknowledgment to _you_.  Good heavens! you sailors are strange
fellows."

"Then what are the contents of the paper?"

"Merely that you make over to your brother the whole of the £500 per
annum left you by your father, with all your right, title, and
interest therein."

Derval was astounded and bewildered not at his own folly and
simplicity, but by the systematic baseness of his brother.

"Oh, wretch!" he exclaimed; "was it not enough to rob me of all, even
my poor patrimony? but to seek to rob me too of Clara, my affianced
wife!"

For a few moments his emotions were stifling, and he gasped rather
than breathed.

"I must own," said Mr. De Murrer, "that when the post brought this
singular document, signed by you, and witnessed by Rookleigh, the
_framer_ of it, illegally expressed and on unstamped paper, I was
sorely puzzled; but, luckily, it is every way valueless."

"Save in so far as revealing the perfidy of which he is capable--the
double villain!"

"While searching your father's papers for documents in connection
with the peerage affair, I came upon one which completely alters all
your affairs, and that I shall show you in time," said Mr. De Murrer.

"He need no longer now pretend to act in my interests in pressing on
the peerage case, and not a moment must be lost in freeing my poor
Clara from the trammels--the evil of mental misery--by which he has
surrounded her."

"Good, good!" said the little lawyer, rubbing his hands.  "The
contract and the settlements won't be signed, after all, and may go
with Rookleigh's document into the waste-paper basket.  But I was due
with them at Lord Oakhampton's an hour ago--a hansom will take us
there in half that time; and now, my dear Derval, let us be off!"

To the confusion of Rookleigh, the mystery of the letters was all
unfolded now, and when the cheques he had paid Miss Sally Trix came
to be known, through Mr. De Murrer, a light was thrown upon his
transactions with her, and the use to which he had put her with
Clara; thus link after link was found, and the chain of his cruelty
and duplicity was complete!

Rookleigh did not wait for the elucidation of all the reader knows.
His brother's sudden appearance in the library was more than enough
for him; he evacuated Lord Oakhampton's house with all speed, and
even quitted London that night, a prey to baffled spite, ambition,
and treachery.

"Oh, Derval, Derval," said Clara, as she reclined upon his breast,
"may God forgive that man for all he has made me suffer!"

"And me too, darling!"

If Derval's blood boiled at his half-brother's perfidy, it boiled
still more when he thought of how a head-wind in the channel or
elsewhere might, by delay, have affected the fortune of all who
figured in the tableau in Lord Oakhampton's library.  But the good
ship _Amethyst_ had brought the wind with her, bravely and splendidly
had she run, and scarcely sheet or tack were lifted, "for," as Joe
Grummet said, "the girls at home were tallying on to the tow-rope."

The document which the lawyer had found among Greville Hampton's
papers proved to be nothing less than a will, dated subsequent to one
on which they had all acted, and which reversed its terms, for £500
yearly were all that accrued to Rookleigh, while all else he
possessed was bequeathed to Derval; so the hand of Nemesis fell
heavily on the former.

So the wedding dresses, the wedding cake and breakfast, and the
bridesmaids too were all required eventually; but a different
bridegroom knelt by Clara's side before the altar rails at St.
George's, Hanover Square, while Rookleigh and his amiable mother were
left at Finglecombe "to chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy."

Captain Talbot was groomsman, and old Joe Grummet, who with
difficulty was restrained from hoisting a flag of the Royal Naval
Reserve out of the drawing-room window, as a prelude to the rice and
slippers, got disreputably tipsy in the butler's pantry, and pulled
all the housemaids about, in the exuberance of his joy, making quite
a riot in the servants' hall.



  LONDON
  PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE, S.W.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 65144 ***