Yes, they would have been well pleased, our Naval Brigade, to have had a flag wherewith to march into the firing-line, but their officers said to them: "You will certainly be given one in the end, as soon as you have won it yonder." And they went away singing, all with the same ardour of heroes; all, I say, not only those who still uphold the admirable traditions of our Navy of old, but even the new recruits, who were already a little corrupted--no more than superficially, however--by disgusting, anti-military claptrap, but who had suddenly recovered their senses and were exalted at the sound of the German guns. All were united, resolute, disciplined, sobered, and dreaming of having a flag on their return. They were sent in haste to Ghent to cover the retreat of the Belgian Army, but on the way they were stopped at Dixmude, where the barbarians with pink skins like boiled pig were established in ten times their number, and where at all costs a stand was to be made to prevent the abominable onrush from spreading farther. They had been told: "The part assigned to you is one of danger and gravity; we have need of your courage. In order to save the whole of our left wing you must sacrifice yourselves until reinforcements arrive. _Try to hold out at least four days._" And they held out twenty-six mortal days. They held out almost alone, for reinforcements, owing to unforeseen difficulties, were insufficient and long in coming. And of the six thousand that marched away, there are to-day not more than three thousand survivors. They had the bare necessities of life and hardly those. When they left Paris, where the weather was warm and summery, they did not anticipate such bitter cold. Most of them wore nothing over their chests except the regulation jumper of cotton, striped with blue, and light trousers, with nothing underneath, on their legs, and over all that, it is true, infantry great-coats to which they were unaccustomed and which hampered their movements. For provisions they had nothing but some tins of _confiture de singe_.[1] Naturally no one was prepared for what was practically isolation for twenty-six long days. In the same circumstances ordinary troops, even though their peers in courage, could never have been equal to the occasion. But they had that faculty of fighting through, common to seafaring men, which is acquired in the course of arduous voyages, in the colonies, among the islands, and thanks to which a true sailor can face any emergency--a special way with them, after all so natural and moreover so merry withal, so tempered with ingratiating tact that it offends nobody. Well, then, they had fought through; for after those three or four epic weeks, in which day and night they had battled like devils, in fire and water, the survivors were found well-nourished, almost, and with hardly a cold among them.