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!