Steering close to our boat the crowd asked us if we needed anything. We replied that we needed everything, and we got it; cigarettes, tobacco, food, candy--in fact, everything that could comfort a soldier's heart, was thrown on our decks. I gazed at the shores of my native land, listening to the strains of "O Canada," played by the band and echoed back by the glorious hills of Devon, and the thrill within me was indescribable. There was also an undercurrent of wonderful feeling that made me proud, not only that I was a Britisher, but that our grim old mother-nation was nursing there in one of her great harbors the robust manhood of a virile daughter-nation that had heard the call and answered and that I was a part, however small, of that answer. Songs of the British nations would go floating out to sea and inland to the hills. Following the strains of "Annie Laurie" would come "Men of Harlech," "The British Grenadiers," "Dear Little Shamrock," and then the incomparable lilt of "Tipperary." We finally received the order to disembark. Now it is an unwritten law in the army, in the practice of that most soldierly art of thieving, that a man must thieve from every battalion and company except his own, and we thought we might just as well start on anything lying around loose on the _Lapland_. The Colonel may have wondered why we came to the "Present arms" with such alacrity when we said farewell to that splendid ship that brought us over; but the truth of it was we wanted to get away from the scene of our activities before any uncomfortable questions could be asked. After a thoroughly profane and good-natured farewell with the burly British sailors and a rousing welcome from the people, we marched out in force to be delivered into the hands of the citizens. And such a welcome! It beggars description. I never had my hand shaken so much and I never was kissed so much in all my life. One middle-aged lady, with two beautiful daughters, exclaimed, "You brave boy, I am going to kiss you for your mother's sake." "I will too," said her daughters, and I was kissed by the entire family. I couldn't help venturing, "How about a kiss for my own sake?" And I glanced at the daughters. "Surely," said the mother, and she kissed me again, but the girls were a little bit abashed and did not respond to my suggestion, much to my disappointment. At one spot in our welcome I was again the subject of an outburst of damnable sympathy from a motherly-hearted woman who almost went into hysterics at the idea of such a child as I going out to help stem the on-rushing Huns. However, my comrades were filled full of the attentions they were receiving from their male and female admirers and my predicament passed unnoticed this time, for which I fervently thanked God.