These and such other topics could not fail to be discussed on board ship, and the discussion necessarily promoted a better understanding between the services, for Jack saw that these rigid gentlemen in red coats and straps and buckles, whom he is rather apt to look upon as Sybaritical and effeminate creatures, had to go through as much hard work and exposure as himself; and the soldier was not a little surprised, perhaps, to find that those whose business is upon the waters lived in comfort which he would gladly find in the best-appointed barrack. Sailors and soldiers worked together in the greatest harmony, although it was trying to the best of tempers to be turned out of bed for a stranger, and although people with only six feet square a-piece to live, move, and have their being in, when stowed away in thousands, might be expected to view their neighbours with a little reasonable dislike. [Sidenote: SIGNAL FOR SAILING.] At half-past four o'clock on Thursday morning, the 7th of September, three guns from the _Agamemnon_ fired in quick succession woke up the sleepers of the fleet. The signal-men made out through the haze of morning twilight the joyful order fluttering in the coloured bunting from the mizen of the Admiral, "Prepare to weigh anchor," and in a quarter of an hour the volumes of smoke rising from the steamers, mingled with white streaks of steam, showed that not much time would be lost in obeying it. Ere seven o'clock arrived the steamers had weighed anchor, and each was busy "dodging about" the mass of transports to pick up its own particular charges. This was a work of time, of trouble, and of difficulty. Towing is at all times an unpleasant operation, but it is especially difficult to arrange the details and to get the towed vessels under weigh when there is such a mass of shipping to thread as there was at present. When the vessels were found, and the hawsers passed and secured, then came the next great difficulty--to get them into their assigned places in the several lines of the different divisions. There was some time lost before the lines were formed, and the signal "to sail" was given. With a gentle breeze off shore the flotilla started in nearly the order assigned to it. The lines were about half a mile apart, and each line was four or five miles long, for the towing power of the several steamers was so unequal, that the weaker ones tailed off and the stronger got ahead, in spite of repeated orders to keep station.