UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS. The voyage of the _Amethyst_ towards tropical seas and shores was far from monotonous, and more than one startling event occurred during its progress. With her snowy canvas spread, her rigging all a-taut (to use a cant nautical phrase), and her deck, whilom so wet, slippery, and foul in dock, well holystoned and swabbed till it was--as Joe Grummet said--white as a lady's hand, the _Amethyst_ was in all her beauty now--all the more so to Derval, who got rid of his sea-sickness ere she cleared the Channel. "Well, my little man," said Captain Talbot one day, when Joe Grummet was teaching him the use of the quadrant, "how do you feel on your sea legs--eh?" "Happy, sir--very happy," replied Derval, turning his bright young face, which was flushed by the keen breeze, laden by the iodine of many thousand miles of the fresh, glorious, and open ocean. "That's right, my lad." "I have not been so happy for many a year past," said Derval, thinking, perhaps, of his mother. "Come, come, youngster, it is rather early in life for you to talk of many years, and of happiness in the past tense," said the Captain, amused by a quaintness in the manner of Derval--a manner born of the kind of isolation in which he had lived in his father's house; and save for the annoyance occasionally given to him by the wasp-like nature of Paul Bitts, he would have had nothing to complain of, for the good example and gentlemanly bearing of Captain Talbot and the first and second mates, affected all the ship's company advantageously. As for the self-won ducking in the West India Dock, Derval hoped Mr. Bitts would forget that and get over it in time; but he never did, and in many ways pursued the feud which he had declared, apparently, on the day Derval first joined the ship. One morning, when he and Derval were in the middle watch (_i.e._ from 12 to 4 A.M., as the ship was nearing the Azores), the latter, overcome by the heavy saline atmosphere of the sea, by youth and the lateness of the hour, began insensibly to doze, with his head resting on the gunnel of the quarter-deck, and in a kind of half-waking dream he thought himself at Finglecombe: young rabbits scudded past in the grass; the hum of the wind in the rigging aloft, suggested that of bees and insects in the sunshine, and the air seemed to become laden with the familiar fragrance of the apple orchards and garden flowers, till a heavy thwack from the new colt of the inevitable Mr. Paul Bitts awoke him with a nervous start. "Sleeping are you--on your watch, too! You'll come to the gallows, you young villain!" exclaimed his senior officer, with a malicious gleam in his closely set and serpent-like eyes; "that will teach you to snore like one of Circe's swine. Now go to windward--keep a bright look-out for the revolving light on Cape Flyaway, and if you see the great sea-serpent, don't forget to call the morning watch."