he open harbour for about twenty minutes when the bows
of the ugly vessel came slowly on. An instant later all the small craft
were ready to speed to their respective berths in their turns, and it
was not so very long before the mine-sweeper was tied to her part of the
dock. The commander of the sister vessel to the one I had been aboard
came over to us.

"Good ship that of yours?" I said.

"Yes," muttered the man with two rings of the Royal Naval Reserve on his
sleeve. "She's all right; but I love this ship. I had her a year ago,
and she's a little wonder. It would take me a long while to love another
vessel."

My skipper laughed.

"Just one of those days," he said. "Come, let's go and have a spot."

V. THE ROYAL NAVAL DIVISION

Buffeted about from Antwerp to Gallipoli, Egypt, the Greek Islands,
Salonika, and then to France, first under an admiral, then part of an
army corps, again under an admiral, and finally back to military
regime--the life of the Royal Naval Division, which startled an Empire
by their valour on the Ancre, has been one full of thrills, sorrows,
threats of extinction, brave deeds, and perilous journeys. They are
proud of their naval origin, and are also tenacious of their naval
customs, despite the fact that all their fighting has been done ashore
and few sailors survive among them.

In August, 1914, Mr. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the
Admiralty, mobilised and organised, as a division for land fighting,
reservist seamen, stokers and marines, and naval volunteers whose
services were not required afloat, also recruits drawn mainly from among
the miners of the North of England and Scotland. Guards' officers, naval
and marine instructors--each in his own ritual--help to train them. To
the Navy, who raided them when it needed seamen or stokers for its
ships, they were "dry-land sailors." To the Army, they were just a bunch
of "so-called salts" or "Winston's Own." But their instructors soon
recognised that in these grousing, middle-aged stokers, and in these
silent stolid illiterate miners and ironworkers from the North Country,
they had the raw material of soldiers as fine as Great Britain can
breed.

In many respects, the Division has had the worst of both worlds. They
have beaten their way steadily to the fore without much recognition in
print; but since Beaucourt fell, both military and naval men have been
eager to grasp their hands.

Now and again a brief mention fell to