For the Cameron Highlanders’ sports, the Countess of Elgin organized a toy-making competition, offering souvenir prizes. Our men entered into the idea with more interest than expected, producing many articles of real value, none that did not bring a good price, and helping materially to make the toy stall a great success. Before sailing for home, the men afloat and ashore combined in presenting a fund exceeding $500 to equip a new school playground for the Inverness boys and girls. When the summer had passed and darkness came on early, dances became frequent, the Scottish lassies quickly learning the American steps. The erstwhile quiet little Queensgate hotel did a rushing business, its ball room being taken, by sailors or officers, six nights in the week. And the men of Base 18, together with amateur talent of Inverness, staged a show, of which Admiral Sims, who saw it in London, said: I saw your show, the second part of it, in London the other day. It had anything of its kind I have seen skinned to death. There isn’t another one that holds a candle to it. It is particularly gratifying that the show included a number of the young girls of Inverness. The show was clean and refined and splendid in every way. It was a pleasure to go behind the curtain and thank them and to kiss that wee bit of a girl who used to do the dance. These diversions kept the men in good spirits and up to the mark in their work. They were the more useful because of our comparative isolation and concealment. The best was made of whatever came, with unabated zeal, steady improvement, and cheerfulness always. Despite the high prices of clothing and the excessive wear and tear on uniforms from the mines, the crews kept themselves, as well as their ships, in creditable appearance. Their discipline was excellent, their behavior on shore on all occasions repeatedly evoking favorable comment, both official and private, and their fine spirit showed also in a handsome subscription to the Liberty Loans, the squadron taking of the fourth loan five dollars for each mine in their fields. As a visiting naval officer reported: The whole Mine Force is short on criticism and complaints, but long on work and results, and the navy should be intensely proud of them. CHAPTER NINETEEN FAREWELL TO THE HIGHLANDS The squadron’s task was not finished with the signing of the armistice, for some of the unused mines had to be carried back. Two weeks passed before orders came for home—all kinds of rumors were rife meanwhile, and the wait was the more trying because of the influenza quarantine against amusement resorts. This had its benefit, in that the Mine Force escaped the epidemic almost entirely, but with the season too far advanced and rainy for athletics and the Y.M.C.A. closed, the quarantine bore hard on the men afloat.