Once more he started from incipient slumber; he thought he heard the cow in her stall, clattering her chain. Surprised, he collected his wits. "Of course," he then said to himself, "it is the tattoo. I am a soldier."
CHAPTER II
"Every hour of every day,
Gunners, be ye blithe and gay!"
(Old Artillery song.)
There was a good deal to do in the orderly-room. This new batch of sixty recruits meant a large amount of work that must be seen to at once, if the wilderness of papers were ever to be brought into some sort of order.
Three men sat bending over their writing: a bombardier, a corporal, and the sergeant-major.
The bombardier was doggedly filling in the lists, only glancing occasionally to see if the pile of forms still to be got through were not growing somewhat smaller.
Käppchen, the corporal, a lanky fellow with cunning eyes, grumbled from time to time at the trouble, and consigned to perdition the dirty rascals who caused it. Of course it was much pleasanter for him to sit in the orderly-room than to be messing about with the idiots out of doors; but he had never bargained for having to scribble away till he nearly got writer's cramp. And to-day the sergeant-major didn't even seem to be thinking of a pause for luncheon.
It therefore happened very opportunely when Captain von Wegstetten, having scarcely listened to the sergeant-major's report, "Nothing new in the battery," said: "Sergeant Schumann, I want to speak to you for a minute."
No further intimation was needed; Käppchen and the bombardier disappeared from the room instantly.