In the following fall the division took up target practice in real earnest and at a special shoot in the South Meadow Chief Gunner’s Mate Herbert E. Wiley won the first place. Barely was this function over when it was decided to produce a comic opera and “The Mikado” was selected. This was presented in Parsons’, so well that critics agreed that the division could sing as correctly as it could sail. In the winter the division tried its fortune again at indoor baseball, with varying results. On one occasion it played an exciting game with Company A, won the game, lost it and won it again, just clearing a lee shore by a score of 19 to 18. On another it defeated the champions of the armory in an eleven-inning contest. The second annual indoor meet demonstrated that the series had arrived to stay, a fact which each February proves again. To extend its activities the division sent a picked gun crew on an inland cruise to New Britain to give an exhibition drill. [Illustration: BOAT CREW AT CHARLES ISLAND ] The field day was spent at Charles Island. To still further extend its activities the division crossed afoot from the island at low tide to the mainland. ❦ COURSE EIGHT ❦ AT NIANTIC Amphibious is the word to apply to the division’s tour of duty that summer. The steam whaleboat, by this time christened “Tillie Hadley,” by her fireman, Gunner’s Mate Arnold, started down the river August 21, 1903, with the three pulling boats in tow, carrying nearly a quarter of the division. The following day the remainder boarded the Elfrida in New Haven harbor, and she with the First Division’s small boats in tow steamed to Crescent Bay. A detail from each division spent eight days afloat and the rest divided their time between Camp Reynolds at the state military rendezvous at Niantic and boat drills in Crescent Bay. The boat work was popular, so much so that in a few days most of the oarsmen were approaching man-o’-war form. At the end of the duty a storm came along which gave work to militia, the seafaring population and landlubbers. In the New York _Herald_ of the next day it was printed: “Old seafaring men down that way say that they never saw the Sound rougher than it was that night.” A sailboat was washed ashore at White Beach, two small sailing vessels dragged anchor near Niantic, a sloop was wrecked to the southwest of the Crescent Beach landing and a large three-masted schooner dragged anchor.