The boats that all the morning had been moving toward the upper bay were returning.  They came slowly, a veritable fleet, steaming down the bay, headed for the open sea, beyond the entrance of the harbour, each crowded and careening to the very gunwales, each whistling with might and main.

And in their midst—­the storm-centre round which this tempest of acclamation surged, the object on which so many eyes were focussed, the hope of an entire nation—­one ship.

She was small and seemingly pitifully inadequate for the great adventure on which she was bound; her lines were short and ungraceful.  From her clumsy iron-shod bow to her high, round stern, from her bulging sides to the summit of her short, powerful masts there was scant beauty in her.  She was broad, blunt, evidently slow in her movements, and in the smooth waters of the bay seemed out of her element.  But, for all that, she imparted an impression of compactness, the compactness of things dwarfed and stunted.  Vast, indeed, would be the force that would crush those bulging flanks, so cunningly built, moreover, that the ship must slip and rise to any too great lateral pressure.  Far above her waist rose her smokestack.  Overhead upon the mainmast was affixed the crow’s nest.  Whaleboats and cutters swung from her davits, while all her decks were cumbered with barrels, with crates, with boxes and strangely shaped bales and cases.

She drew nearer, continuing that slow, proud progress down the bay, honoured as no visiting sovereign had ever been.  The great white man-of-war dressed ship as she passed, and the ensign at her fighting-top dipped and rose again.  At once there was a movement aboard the little outbound ship; one of her crew ran aft and hauled sharply at the halyards, and then at her peak there was broken out not the brilliant tri-coloured banner, gay and brave and clean, but a little length of bunting, tattered and soiled, a faded breadth of stars and bars, a veritable battle-flag, eloquent of strenuous endeavour, of fighting without quarter, and of hardship borne without flinching and without complaining.

The ship with her crowding escorts held onward.  By degrees the City was passed; the bay narrowed oceanwards little by little.  The throng of people, the boom of cannon, and the noise of shouting dropped astern.  One by one the boats of the escorting squadron halted, drew off, and, turning with a parting blast of their whistles, headed back to the City.  Only the larger, heavier steamers and the sea-going tugs still kept on their way.  On either shore of the bay the houses began to dwindle, giving place to open fields, brown and sear under the scudding sea-fog, for now a wind was building up from out the east, and the surface of the bay had begun to ruffle.