Hannibal to act as umpire among them, and establish their
claims to the best side of the fire. His answer was brief and to the
point--

"Dere be dis fire. You hab him so long. Him wait for no one. Your time
up. You take off pot, or I pitch pot into sea. Others must eat as well
as you; so keep your breath to cool your porridge; and if that no suit
you, fight it out--fight it out!"

Here he flourished over their heads his iron ladle, full of some
scalding liquor, which silenced the combatants for one while, until a
new set of applicants emerging from the gangway, made them rush more
vigorously than ever to the charge.

As Flora continued pacing the deck, and watching the noisy group round
the cooking-stove, she felt no small degree of curiosity respecting
them. They were her fellow-voyagers to that unknown land to which all
their hopes and fears instinctively turned; and she could scarcely
regard with indifference those whom Providence had thrown together in
pursuit of the same object. She wanted to know something about them from
their own lips--what their past lives had been, what were their future
prospects, and the causes that had led them to emigrate to Canada.

Perhaps something of the same feeling is experienced by most persons
suddenly thrown together and confined for some weeks in such a narrow
space as the interior of a small brig, for the _Anne_ contained more
passengers for her size and tonnage than many large three-masted
vessels. During the long voyage her curiosity was amply gratified, and
she learned something of the history and characters of most of these
people. First, there was an old highland soldier, who had served during
the greater part of the Peninsular war, and had seen a great deal of
hard service, and received a number of hard knocks in the way of wounds
and broken bones, of which (now the pain and danger was over) he was not
a little proud, as they formed a never-ending theme of boasting and
self-exaltation; and had honest Donald Macdonald charged his
fellow-passengers a penny a peep at the scars on his legs, breast, and
arms, he might have made enough to pay the expenses of his passage out.
"His wounds," he said, "were all in the right place. He was too well
bred to turn his back to an enemy."

Macdonald was one of the many unfortunate old pensioners, who had been
induced to part with a certain provision for his old age, to try his
fortunes in the backwoods of Canada. He knew as little of