three in the morning
I feel as our great ancestor , Baron Moore , felt at Fontenoy when the Sassenachs were over against the French lines -- as if all the blood in Munster was in my veins and I wanted to spill it on the villains ferninst us . '' The poet declined to quote from his epistle , and the three friends sat in the dim light until midnight , wondering over what the morrow had in store . Dick Perley listened in awe to Jack 's wonderful ratiocinations on what was to come -- secretly believing him much more learned in war than this General McDowell who was commanding the army . The first bugle sounded at three in the morning in the Caribees ' camp , and when the coffee had been hastily dispatched , the men began to understand the cause of their being shunted into the field so early the evening before while the rear of the column marched ahead of them . The Caribees passed a mile or more of encampments , the men not yet aroused , and when at daylight the whole body was in motion they were in advance , with nothing before them but a few hundred cavalry . A delirious expectation , a rapturous sense of holding the post of danger , kept every sense in such a thrill of anticipation that the hours passed like minutes . The dusty roads , the intolerable thirst , and the nauseous , tepid water , the blistered feet , the abraded hips , where the cartridge-box began to wear the flesh -- all these woes of the march were ignored in the one impulse to see the ground ahead , to note the first sight of the enemy .