On the last day of April the long preparations were finally completed. The eight steamers lay along the Levee with flags floating from their forward peaks and the black smoke pouring from their funnels. A great crowd had gathered on the river bank to watch the departure; and while drays and wagons rattled over the cobblestones and long lines of negro roustabouts ran back and forth across the gang-planks of the steamers, carrying on board the last packages of freight, Al stood at the boiler deck rail of the _Island City_, General Sully's headquarters boat. He waved his hand and smiled, more cheerfully than he felt at that moment, to his mother and Annie and Uncle Will, who stood in the wide doorway of the wharf-boat below, looking up at him. Now that the final moment had come, Mrs. Briscoe's heart was torn at parting with her boy, who had so loyally and unselfishly devoted himself to her wellbeing since her husband's death. But she bore it as bravely as a good mother always bears such trials, smiling brightly at him through her tears as the head-lines were slipped from the _Island City's_ bow and her great stern wheel began slowly to revolve. Al, his own eyes misty, watched his mother until in the distance she became blurred with the crowd. The steamer swung gracefully out into the swift current of the Mississippi, described a wide, sweeping curve to the middle of the channel, and then, rounding up stream at the head of the majestic line of her consorts, forged up past the smoky city on the first mile of the long journey into the Northwestern wilderness. Until the cheering crowd on the Levee was quite blotted out by distance and intervening steamers along the bank, Al stood at the rail looking back. When at last he turned away, with a strange feeling of depression and loneliness, he found Lieutenant Dale standing behind him. "Come, boy," said he, slapping Al's shoulder, "brace up! We are going to have a great time this Summer, and you'll be mighty glad you came. I know it's hard leaving your folks. I felt just the same way less than three years ago when I marched off from home to Washington and the first Bull Run. But it does no good to feel blue over it; you'll come back again all right, anyway. Get busy; that's the best remedy for blues. Are those last goods that were brought on board checked up yet? No? Well, you better go down and check them, hadn't you?"