That routine was almost unvarying and therein lay its value in molding the growing army into a perfect fighting machine. It fostered team work of the finest kind.
At six o'clock the bugle blew reveille that called the sleepers from their cots. There was no disregarding that imperative summons, no turning over for another "forty winks."
In an instant the sleeping camp had sprung to life. Uniforms were donned, faces washed, hair slicked back and cots made inside of fifteen minutes.
Then came the "monkey drill" and setting-up exercises, when the boys had to go through all sorts of grotesque but beneficial motions to exercise the muscles and stir the blood.
Of course there was some grumbling at first. Bart, who with all his physical fitness, liked to get his sleep out in the morning, had hard work to get his eyes open and feet on the floor at the same moment.
"Gee, how do you do it?" he grumblingly asked of Frank one morning, just after reveille and while he was rushing around with tousled head and one eye shut. "By the time I know I'm awake you're all ready, and worse than that, you look as if you enjoyed it. Gee, it's a gift!"
"You're like the man," Frank had remarked cheerfully, as he trussed up his trousers, "who was sentenced to die at daybreak. 'Oh, that's all right,' he answered. 'I never get up that early!'"
But the setting up exercises never failed to banish the last vestige of drowsiness, and by seven o'clock breakfast began to assume gigantic proportions. And how they ate!
After breakfast came the manual of arms, field practice, drilling in semaphore work and sometimes—this the boys looked forward to and enjoyed most,—a long hike in the spring sunshine to the exhilarating beat of martial music.
Then from eleven to two they did as they pleased and as dinner came within that period they mostly, to quote Billy Waldon, "wolfed."