“Weren’t a good many of you out of town?”
“Not this Saturday. We knew what was coming. You see, if we pull through the inspection we may move up one place on the roster for foreign service…. You’d better stand back. We’re going to pillow-fight.”
The companies stooped to the stuffed kit-bags, doubled with them variously, piled them in squares and mounds, passed them from shoulder to shoulder like buckets at a fire, and repeated the evolution.
“What’s the idea?” I asked of Verschoyle, who, arms folded behind him, was controlling the display. Many women had descended from the carriages, and were pressing in about us admiringly.
“For one thing, it’s a fair test of wind and muscle, and for another it saves time at the docks. We’ll suppose this first company to be drawn up on the dock-head and those five others still in the troop-train. How would you get their kit into the ship?”
“Fall ’em all in on the platform, march ’em to the gangways,” I answered, “and trust to Heaven and a fatigue party to gather the baggage and drunks in later.”
“Ye-es, and have half of it sent by the wrong trooper. I know that game,” Verschoyle drawled. “We don’t play it any more. Look!”
He raised his voice, and five companies, glistening a little and breathing hard, formed at right angles to the sixth, each man embracing his sixty-pound bag.
“Pack away,” cried Verschoyle, and the great bean-bag game (I can compare it to nothing else) began. In five minutes every bag was passed along either arm of the T and forward down the sixth company, who passed, stacked, and piled them in a great heap. These were followed by the rifles, belts, greatcoats, and knapsacks, so that in another five minutes the regiment stood, as it were, stripped clean.
“Of course on a trooper there’d be a company below stacking the kit away,” said Verschoyle, “but that wasn’t so bad.”