The camels having taken up their position near the ship, the plugs are drawn, allowing them to fill with water and sink. Being now ready to receive the ship, our anchor is hove up, lines streamed, and she is hauled in between them. The connecting chains are then hove taut by the windlasses, and thus the ship is completely docked, her bottom resting fairly on the concave inner surfaces of the camels, and the chains passing under her keel. She is now ready to be raised, and as soon as the steamboat heaves in sight, returning from her regular trip to New Bedford the steam pumps are set in operation throwing out the water from the camels. The steamer passes within hail, and goes on into the harbor to land her mails and passengers, the captain promising to return at once and hook on to us. Meanwhile the steampumps work steadily on, throwing out the water, and the whole fabric is seen gradually to rise, inch by inch, till the water is all out, and the ship is lifted out of the water, the camels themselves being flat and the draft very light. We are just in time for the returning steamboat, hawsers are run to us, she takes us in tow, and after a short struggle to overcome the _vis inertiæ_ of the immense arklike contrivance, we move along under good headway. We round Brant Point and steam up nearly to the end of the wharf, when the steamer leaves us, the camels are filled and sink down again, the ship is dropped out from between them, lines run to the pier, and, in a few minutes, she is tied up head and stern alongside her wharf, and ready to discharge her oil. "Hurrah for the camels!" is the sentiment of every man on board, and of nearly every one on shore, too, except the lightermen whose "occupation is gone." Our old landlord is on hand to furnish us board and lodging at the old rates; Messrs. Brooks & Co. are in the same place, the same business operations are going on now as three years ago, and the same knots of seafaring men, or, at least, their very counterparts, pervade "the store," and pass their time in much the same manner. No one seems to have changed or grown any older. There is nothing new under the sun but the camels and the steamer "Massachusetts." Of course, we could not be paid off until the oil was discharged on the wharf, gauged, and filled up, so that our "lays" could be calculated exactly. This detained me several days; for, although I might have drawn money from the owners, or from Brooks & Co., yet I preferred to settle up the whole matter before going home to my friends, rather than to be under the necessity of returning to Nantucket. I, of course, took my place among the veteran whalemen, now. I had earned the right to wear a fine, blue roundabout, and morocco pumps, with long streamers of ribbon, to roll and swagger as becomes the "ancient mariner," and to patronize the green hands who formed the last cargo of the Lydia Ann, for that gallant craft is still running as good as new.