Old James wrote a letter to his brother, who was evidently a squatter of considerable affluence and who, judging by the cordial tone of the only letter he had written, would be glad in his old age, being a childless widower, to welcome his kinsfolk from England. It was decided to give up the farm at Christmas and to sail as early as possible in the New Year. Fortune was kind up to the point of granting old James a good harvest that season, and although the new tenant, Farmer Wilberforce, did not pay as he ought to have paid for the live and dead stock, James scraped together enough to enable the three of them to equip themselves for a long journey and avoid the steerage. It became important to start as early as possible in the New Year, because Elizabeth was with child, and it was hoped to leave England in time to avoid childbirth on the high seas. Edward was painfully conscious of being able to do very little to help old James, and he tried to console himself with the belief that once ashore in Australia he would by his energy make amends for his present helplessness. Places were secured in the second class of the _Mariana_, a ship of 1,374 tons, which was due to sail from Liverpool in the first week of January; but on the night before her departure, when all on board were making merry to the strains of an emigrant fiddler and an emigrant piper, an alarm of fire was raised. There was plenty of help at hand from the crowded shipping of the Mersey; the passengers with their luggage were taken off by steam-tugs and boats; and the vessel was run ashore, where when the tide left her high and dry she was gutted by the flames. Elizabeth bore the terrifying experience with fortitude, and when the shipping agents in Liverpool told them of a ship sailing from London within a few days she was not backward in urging her husband and grandfather to make every effort to obtain a passage. Nevertheless, the nervous tension to which she had been exposed proved too much for her, and even before the train journey was accomplished her travail began prematurely. There was no time to search for comfortable lodgings. The first rooms they found in Pomona Terrace, a dreary by-street off the Euston Road, had to serve their need, and while the landlady, a good-natured, grubby Irishwoman, helped Elizabeth to bed, Edward rushed out into the wet foggy night to summon a doctor.