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It appeared almost a loss of dignity when the Company took her off the India route and held her on the Australian berth. But very soon she had taken the place that always appeared to be hers of right, and she was the ship of all others wherein to sail for the new world beneath us. And in due course the sturdy Empire-builders scattered all over the vast new country were speaking of her as the Anglo-Indians had done a generation ago, and the “new chum” who had “come out in the Lion” found himself welcome in far-away bush homes, from Adelaide to Brisbane, as one of the same family, a protégé of the benevolent old ship. She held her own well, too, in point of speed with the new steel and iron clippers, in spite of what foolish youngsters sneeringly said about her extended quarter-galleries, her far-reaching head, and immense many-windowed stern. But gradually the fierce stress of modern competition told upon her, and it needed no great stretch of the imagination to suppose that the magnificent old craft felt her dignity outraged as voyage after voyage saw her crew lists dwindle until instead of the eighty able seamen of her young days she carried but twenty-two. The goodly company of officers, midshipmen, and artificers were cut down also to a third of their old array, and as a necessary consequence much of her ancient smartness of appearance went with them. Then she should have closed her splendid career in some great battle with the elements, and found a fitting glory of defeat without disgrace before the all-conquering, enduring sea. That solace was not to be hers, but as a final effort she made the round voyage from Melbourne to London and back, including the handling of two cargoes, in five months and twenty days, beating anything of the kind ever recorded of a sailing-vessel.