SHORTLY after one o'clock, the transport drew alongside the pier at Fort
Warren, and the batteries disembarked and formed in column, with the
field music at the head. Then the regiment marched up from the pier, in
through the main sallyport, and on to the parade, where line of masses
was formed, arms were stacked and knapsacks unslung, preparatory to the
work of getting the baggage up from the transport and settling down in
quarters. And here the regiment was treated to an unwelcome surprise.
The rain-proof wooden village which it had expected to find waiting for
its occupancy had not yet come into existence; over by the main magazine
stood two or three lonely booths, but the rest of the cantonment still
remained piled in disjoined pieces on the lighters lying at the pier. To
be sure, a delegation from the institution at Deer Island was engaged in
giving a half-hearted imitation of a working detail, but it was obvious
to the most obtuse that the coming of night would find the task of
village-building hardly begun—and this led the seven hundred men
standing at ease behind the line of stacks on the soggy parade ground,
and lunching in the cold, drizzling rain, on hardtack and canned beef,
to make philosophical comments on the horrors of war in general, and of
this war in particular.
But the time allowed for this innocent pastime was brief. Battery by
battery, details were told off for pack-train duty, and in a very short
time an endless chain of men circulated between the pier and the parade,
filing empty-handed through the little postern in the northwestern
bastion, and returning by way of the main sallyport, heavy laden with
roof and wall sections. Even the wearied men in brown from Deer
Island—who promptly had been christened by the batterymen the "Third
Corps of Cadets"—seemed to catch the spirit of the occasion, and showed
more animation in putting one foot before the other. And it was here
that the regiment added to its repertoire a new version of an old song,
with the merry refrain:
"They broke our backs
A-luggin' shacks,
In the regular army-O!"
[Illustration:
Photograph by W. H. Caldwell, Brockton.