The medical examinations were over elsewhere; but there were 'returns,' endless, as useless apparently, to be made up and signed in duplicate; inspection of equipments; extra kits at sea to be seen to, and dinner provided for the embarking soldiers, the arms racked and two men per company told off to look after them, extra dogs on the upper deck to be pursued, caught, and sent ashore despite the remonstrances of owners, with the excess of baggage; chests piled upon chests were being sent down below, with bedding, valises, uniform cases, bullock trunks, and tubs; the knapsacks to be stowed away over the mess-tables, sentries posted on the baggage-room and elsewhere. Amid all this a buzz of conversation was in progress at the break of the poop among soldiers and their friends, some of whom had contrived to get on board, and to one of these in which there was something absurd he could not help listening. 'Sorr, is Tim Riley aboord?' asked a young Irish labourer, looking anxiously and with a somewhat scared look about him. 'Who the devil is Tim Riley?' asked a petty officer in charge of the gangway. The Irishman slunk back and addressed a somewhat _insouciant_-looking English recruiting sergeant, with ribbons fluttering from his cap, and whose business then could only be to get a few stray 'grogs' before the bell sounded for 'shore.' 'Sergeant, dear, may be you know Tim Riley who inlisted into the sogers?' 'Tim Riley? How do you spell his name?' 'Devil a one of me knows, but he was a boy from Dublin.' 'Oh, I knewed him well. He's a colonel now,' replied the sergeant. 'A colonel--oh, glory be to God! Is it Tim, whose ears I've warmed many a time for stealing the ould man's Scotch apples? Where is the shilling, sergeant?' 'Now be off and make an _omadhaun_ of yourself,'said one of the 18th. 'I knew Thady Boyle; he 'listed as a captain--devil a less--in the Royal County Down, and when he joined he was put in the black-hole by a spalpeen of an English corporal.' The bustle of the embarkation seemed endless, but at last the bugle sounded, and a bell clanged for all visitors to quit the ship; the various gangways were run ashore, the screw began to revolve, and H.M.S. _Bannockburn_ was off. While the air seemed to vibrate with cheers, the great white trooper, slowly and stately in aspect, came out of the harbour between the Blockhouse Fort and the Round Tower, and steamed abreast of the crowded Clarence Esplanade, which was gay with people even at that season, and there the soldiers, as they clustered like red bees on the vessel's side and in the lower rigging, could see the troops of jolly children with frocks and trousers tucked up paddling in the water, so far as they dared venture, or making breakwaters and fortifications of sand as actively as if they had to defend the shores of old England.