Some time was taken up in arranging the hold. Considerable confusion was manifest in that important locality. Tin pans were intermingled with bedding, provisions with wearing apparel, books with knives and forks, while amid the scene the cooking stove towered aloft prominent. To tell the truth, the scene was rather free and easy than elegant; nor could an unprejudiced observer have called it altogether comfortable. In fact, to one who looked at it with a philosophic mind, an air of squalor might possibly have been detected. Yet what of that? The philosophic mind just alluded to would have overlooked the squalor, and regarded rather the health, the buoyant animal spirits, and the determined habit of enjoyment, which all the ship's company evinced, without exception. The first thing which they did in the way of preparation for the voyage was to doff the garments of civilized life, and to don the costume of the "B. O. W. C." Those red shirts, decorated with a huge white cross on the back, had been washed and mended, and completely reconstructed, so that the rents and patches which were here and there visible on their fair exteriors, served as mementos of former exploits, and called up associations of the past without at all deteriorating from the striking effect of the present. Glengary bonnets adorned their heads, and served to complete the costume. The labor of dressing was followed by a hurried arrangement of the trunks and bedding; after which they all emerged from the hold and ascending to the deck, looked around upon the scene. Above, the sky was blue and cloudless, and between them and the blue sky floated the flag, from whose folds the face looked benignantly down. The tide was now on the ebb, and as the wind was fair, both wind and tide united to bear them rapidly onward. Before them was Blomidon, while all around was the circling sweep of the shores of Minas Bay. A better day for a start could not have been found, and everything promised a rapid and pleasant run. "I must say," remarked Captain Corbet, who had for some time been standing buried in his own meditations at the helm,--"I must say, boys, that I don't altogether regret bein once more on the briny deep. There was a time," he continued, meditatively, "when I kine o' anticipated givin up this here occypation, an stayin to hum a nourishin of the infant. But man proposes, an woman disposes, as the sayin is,--an you see what I'm druv to. It's a great thing for a man to have a companion of sperrit, same as I have, that keeps a' drivin an a drivin at him, and makes him be up an doin. An now, I declar, if I ain't gittin to be a confirmed wanderer agin, same as I was in the days of my halcyon an shinin youth. Besides, I have a kine o' feelin as if I'd be a continewin this here the rest of all my born days." "I hope you won't feel homesick," remarked Bart, sympathetically.