Showers of small coin and cigarettes were dropped into their boat, and the way in which they fought for position, scrambling over or under one another, upsetting this one or knocking down that, showed that these lads were quite capable of upholding all the old fighting traditions of the British Navy. A tug-boat soon steamed alongside, too, and down the accommodation-ladder scrambled those of us who were lucky enough to have permission to go ashore.
"Come along, Reggy," I shouted. But Reggy shook his head sorrowfully, and his handsome face was clouded.
"Just my rotten luck to be orderly officer on a day like this!" he replied. "To-day I guard the ship, but to-morrow—oh, to-morrow!" Reggy held out both hands in mock appeal to the shore: "Me for the red paint and city lights!"
Progress up the streets of Devonport was slow. Thousands of troops already landed were marching to the time of "The Maple Leaf Forever," and every foot of pavement or sidewalk was packed with struggling but enthusiastic humanity shouting itself hoarse in delirious welcome.
We were on the upper deck of a tram-car, leaning over the throng, and eagerly looking for the faces of friends in the ranks of a passing battalion. They swung along to the music of their band—a clean-cut, well-set-up, manly lot, who marched with the firm independent step of the free born. Suddenly our colonel discovered a familiar face among the khaki-clad below. There is no military precedent for what he did; years of training fell away on the instant. He leaned from the car and shouted:
"Hello, 'Foghorn'! What cheer?"
"Foghorn" looked up. His right arm was somewhat hampered, from a military point of view, by reason of being about the waist of a pretty girl, who accommodatingly marched along with the battalion in general, and "Foghorn" in particular.
"Hello, Jack," he bellowed in a voice which easily accounted for his nickname. "Lots of cheer. Can't salute. One arm busy! Other is glass arm from saluting the brass hats. See you later. Good luck!"
And thus our cosmopolitan and ultra-democratic battalion passed on.
Some one has said that the Englishman is temperamentally cold. It can't be proved by Devonport or Plymouth. His temperature in both towns registered ninety-eight degrees in the shadiest and most secluded spots. And the women and children! Banish all thought of British frigidity! The Canadians in England never discovered it.