the
discipline, self-restraint, endurance and patience which soldiering
demands. (For a driver, it is a liberal education in itself to have
lived with and for two horses day and night for eight months!) Perhaps
the best of all is to have given up newspaper reading for a time and
have stepped one's self into the region of open-air facts where
history is made and the empire is moulded; to have met and mixed with
on that ground, where all classes are fused, not only men of our blood
from every quarter of the globe, but men of our own regular army who
had fought that desperate struggle in the early stages of the war
before we were thought of; to have lived their life, heard their
grievances, sympathized with their needs, and admired their splendid
qualities.

As to the Battery, it is not for a driver in the ranks to generalize
on its work. But this one can say, that after a long and trying
probation on the line of communications we did at length do a good
deal of work and earn the confidence of our Brigadier. We have been
fortunate enough to lose no lives through wounds and only one from
sickness, a fact which speaks highly for our handling in the field by
our officers, and for their general management of the Battery.
Incidentally, we can fairly claim to have proved, or helped to prove,
that Volunteer Artillery can be of use in war; though how much skill
and labour is involved in its sudden mobilization only the few able
men who organized ours in January last can know.

To return to the _Aurania_.

On the 19th of October we were anchored at St. Vincent, with the
fruit-laden bum-boats swarming alongside, and the donkey-engines
chattering, derricks clacking, and coal-dust pervading everything.

Here we read laconic telegrams from London, speaking of a great
reception before us on Saturday the 27th, and thenceforward the talk
was all of runs, and qualities of coal, and technical mysteries of the
toiling engines, which were straining to bring us home by Friday
night. Every steward, stoker, and cabin boy had his circle of
disciples, who quoted and betted on his predictions as though they
were the utterings of an oracle; but the pessimists gradually
prevailed, for we met bad weather and heavy head-seas on entering the
bay. It was not till sunrise on Friday itself that we sighted land, a
white spur of cliff, with a faint suggestion of that long unseen
colour, green, behind it, seen across some miles of wind-whipped
foaming