Long before ten o'clock Saturday morning—the hour for sailing—Mr. Hartley and his party were on board the big which was to take them to New York. Here, again, new sensations and new experiences awaited the Happy Hexagons, not one of whom had ever been on so large a boat.  
"I declare, I do just feel as if I was going abroad," breathed Cordelia, in an awestruck voice, as she crossed the gangplank.
 
"Well, I'm sure we are, almost," Genevieve. "We're going to have a hundred hours of it. You know that little pamphlet that told about it called it 'a hundred golden hours at sea.' Oh, Cordelia, only think—one hundred golden hours!"
 
"You'll think it's a thousand, if you happen to be ," Tilly. (Tilly was looking rather white to-day.) "And they won't be golden ones, either—they'll be lead ones. I know because I've been to Portland when it's rough."
 
"Well, we aren't going to be seasick," retorted Genevieve, with conviction. "We're just going to have the best time ever. See if we don't!"
 
"Now, dearie," said Mr. Hartley, hurrying up at that moment, "I engaged one of the for Mrs. Kennedy, and I think Miss Tilly had better be with her. The bed will be much more comfortable for her poor arm than a would be, and Mrs. Kennedy can look after her better, too, in that way. The little of the will give us all a place to meet together. There are two there which they turn into a lounge in the daytime. I thought perhaps you and Miss Cordelia could sleep there. Then I have staterooms for the rest of us—I engaged them all a week ago, of course. Now if you'll come with me I reckon we can set up housekeeping right away," he finished with a smile.
 
"Setting up housekeeping" proved to be an absorbing task, indeed. It included not only their in the chosen places, but interviewing purser and in regard to rugs, steamer chairs, and other exciting matters. Then there was the joy of exploring the great ship that was to be their home for so many days. The Ladies' Parlor, the Library with its books and magazines, the Dining Saloon with its prettily-laid tables and its chairs (like piano stools, Tilly said), the decks with their long, airy , all came in for delighted of satisfaction which increased to a chorus of oh's and ah's when the trip really began, and the stately ship was wending its way down the Great River to the of Mexico.
 
First there was to be seen the city itself, nestled beyond its of levees.
 
"Dear me!" Cordelia. "I don't believe I'd have slept a last night if I'd realized how much below the river we were. Only fancy if one of those levees had sprung a leak!"
 
"Why, they'd have sent for the , of course," observed Tilly, gravely.
 
"Of course! Still—they don't look very leaky, to me," laughed Genevieve.
 
"Was it here, or somewhere else, that a man (or was it a child?) put his arm (or was it a finger?) in a little hole in the wall and stopped the leak, and so saved the town?" Bertha aloud dreamily.
 
"Of course it was," answered Tilly with grave emphasis; and not until the others laughed did Bertha wake up enough to turn her back with a .
 
"Well, it was somewhere, anyhow," she .
 
"As if we could doubt that—after what you said," murmured Tilly.
 
"But they have had floods here, haven't they?" questioned Alma Lane.
 
Genevieve gave a sudden laugh. At the others' surprised look she explained:
 
"Oh, I'm not laughing at the real floods, the water floods they've had, of course. It's just that I[238] happened to think of something I read some time ago. They had one flood here of—molasses."
 
"Mo—lass—es!" chorused several voices.
 
"Yes. A big tank that the city used to have for a reservoir had been bought by a sugar company and turned into a storage for molasses. Well, it burst one day, and a little matter of a million gallons of molasses went exploring through the streets. They say some poor mortals had actually to to dry land."
 
"Genevieve! what a story," cried Elsie.
 
"But it's true," declared Genevieve. "A whole half-mile square of the city was flooded, honestly. At least, the newspapers said it was."
 
"How the pickaninnies must have gloried in it," Tilly, "—if they liked 'bread and perlashes' as well as I used to. Only think of having such a big saucerful to dip your bread into!"
 
"Tilly!" groaned Genevieve.
 
They were at Port Chalmette, now. The Crescent City lay behind them, and beyond lay the shining river-roadway, with its fertile, highly-cultivated bordering each side, green and beautiful.
 
"How , perfectly lovely!" cried Elsie. "And I'm not sick one bit."
 
"Naturally not—yet," laughed Tilly. "But you just wait. We don't sail the Mississippi all the way to New York, you know."
 
"I wish we did," said Genevieve, her eyes dreamily following the shore line. "But we're only on it for a hundred miles."
 
"I don't," disagreed Elsie. "I want to see the Gulf Stream. They say it's a deep blue, and that you can see it plainly. I think a blue river in a green sea must be lovely—like a blue ribbon trailing down a light green gown, you know."
 
"Well, I want to see the real ocean, 'way out—out. I want to see nothing but water, water everywhere," declared Alma Lane.
 
"'And not a drop to drink,'" quoted Tilly. "Well, young lady, you may see the time when you'd give your eyes for a bit of land—and just any old land would do, too, so long as it stayed put!"
 
"What does it feel like to be seasick?" asked Cordelia, interestedly.
 
"It feels as if the bottom had dropped out of everything, and you didn't much care, only you wished you'd gone with it," laughed Tilly.
 
"Who was it?—wasn't it Mark Twain who said that the first half-hour you were afraid you would die, and the next you were awfully afraid you wouldn't?" questioned Elsie.
 
"I don't know; but whoever said it knew what he was talking about," declared Tilly. "You just wait!"
 
"We're waiting," murmured Genevieve, .
 
"You young ladies don't want to forget your exercise," said Mr. Hartley smilingly, coming up at that moment with Mrs. Kennedy. "We've just been five times around the deck."
 
"It's eleven laps to the mile," supplemented Mrs. Kennedy with a smile.
 
"What's a lap?" asked Cordelia.
 
"Sounds like a kitten on a with a saucer of milk," laughed Tilly, frowning a little as she tried to adjust her more comfortably.
 
"Well, young ladies, we'll show you just what a lap is, if you'll come with us," promised Mr. Hartley; and with the girls expressed themselves as being quite ready to be shown.
 
On and on, mile after mile, down the great river swept the great ship until Forts Jackson and St. Philip were reached and left behind; then on and on for other miles to the narrow South Pass where on either side the Eads Jetties called exclamations of wonder.
 
"Well, you'd better 'ah' and 'um,'" laughed Genevieve. "They happen to be one of the greatest engineering in the world; that's all."
 
"How do you know that?" demanded Bertha.
 
"Don't worry her," cut in Tilly, with mock sympathy. "Poor thing! it's only a case of another guidebook, of course."
 
"Well, all is, just keep your weather eye open," laughed Genevieve, "for when we make the South Pass Lightship, then ho! for the—"
 
"Broad Atlantic," interposed Tilly.
 
"Well, not until you've passed through the little matter of the Gulf of Mexico," rejoined Genevieve; while a chorus of laughing voices :
 
"Why, Tilly Mack, where's your ge............