Now past eighteen years of age, Derval's face was decidedly of a handsome cast, inherited, like his well-knit figure, from his father, and he had the soft, gentle, and earnest eyes of his mother--the tender Mary, whose grave was under the shadow of Finglecombe Church, but on which no loving hand laid a chaplet now. He was intelligent and experienced far beyond his years, and had, in the opinion of Joe Grummet, only one defect as a sailor--a fancy for sedulously cultivating on his upper lip something that Joe stigmatised as "fluff"; but it was certainly adding fast to the character of a very fine cast of features. So it was as third mate, and as such keeping a bright look-out ahead, while assisting Mr. Girtline to conn, or direct the steerage, that, on a brilliant afternoon in autumn--though there is no autumn in those isles of eternal summer--Derval saw the Bermudas, to all appearance like a range of low sterile hills, at the base of which the ocean is dashed into a line of white foam, rise gradually on the lee-bow, while cheerily the afternoon watch were singing, as they got the "ground tackle" ready and bent to the anchors. These isles are so numerous that there is said to be one for every day in the year--some writers say four hundred and more--and as the ship neared them the short greensward that covers them, their dark cedar-trees, and pretty, but low, white dwellings, rapidly became visible, together with the masts of several vessels of war, as the group serves as a summer station for some of our American squadron, and also as a rendezvous for the great steamers of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company; but the whole of these isles, which are formed by the zoophyte, or coral worm, are so completely hemmed in by perilous rocks, that it is only with extreme caution that a vessel of even ten tons burden can enter the roads. The water, however, is so beautifully clear and pellucid that the pilots can make their way with considerable facility between the coral reefs. There is but one channel for large vessels into the principal anchorage, and through that the _Amethyst_ was guided by a native pilot at flood-tide, for at low-water the whole of the rocks are nearly dry. After the cargo was out, there was some delay about getting a freight for England, as the main dependence of the colony is upon the naval and military establishments that have been formed there, and on the shipyards and saltworks; and now there had been a falling off in onions and whale oil, which are among the chief exports of the "vexed Bermoothes."