A Story of the Sea.
BY
JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF "ROMANCE OF WAR," ETC., ETC.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE,
PALL MALL. S.W.
1881.
(All rights reserved.)
LONDON
W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE S.W.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.—"Playing with Shells upon the Shores of Time"
CHAPTER II.—"Therefore he loved Gold in special"
CHAPTER III.—On board the good ship Amethyst
CHAPTER IV.—Under the Southern Cross
CHAPTER V.—After Long Years
DERVAL HAMPTON.
(A STORY OF THE SEA.)
"I wonder why Heaven sent us into thisworld to face the mortifications we have toendure?"
"Do not say this, Greville, dearest; it isnot for us to judge; we have but to sufferand endure, and be thankful for life, forhealth, and that we are not worse off thanwe are."
"Thankful for life!" exclaimed the man,bitterly. "Why should I be thankful for alife of poverty, obscurity, and trouble?"
"Trouble is sent, as the preacher tells us,to make us better and draw us closer to God.It is 'not my will, but Thine be done'; sowe ought not to question the mystery oflife; and then, husband dear, we have ourlittle boy!"
As she said this, something of a soft smilereplaced the angry and far-away expressionthat filled her husband's dark eyes.
Greville Hampton and his wife Mary—herhands busy with work—were seated in theivy-clad porch of their little cottage on abright evening in summer. Before them, atthe end of the vista down the dell in which itstood, lay the waters of the English Channelglittering in sunlight, as it rolled away fromRockham Bay to craggy Hartland Point, asheer precipice 300 feet in height. If humbleand small in accommodation, the cottage ofFinglecombe was pretty externally, with itswealth of creeping plants, and kept scrupulouslyneat and clean within, though destituteof every luxury.
Before the cottage lay the pretty gardenwhich Greville Hampton tended with hisown hands, and where Mary reared andtwined her flowers. There were the ripeningstrawberries, their fresh green leaves lyinglightly on beds of yellow straw, the lateasparagus and wonderful cucumbers underglass-shades, mellow-flavoured peas in borders,and wonderful nectarines climbing up thewall. Behind the cottage, on the south, layFinglecombe, (in old Devonian) "The dellwith the hazel boundary," and a lovely dellit was, bordered by gentle slopes, coveredwith those "apple bowers," for which thedistrict is so famous, in all their luxurianceand greenery. Yet, all this brought nopleasure to the eye or mind of Greville Hampton,a moody and discontented man, one on whomthe world and society had smiled in otherdays, and thus he was ever comparing thepresent with the irrecoverable past.
There was an air of great refinement inboth husband and w