eight in the morning
Slane was , just then , the only moderately contented man in barracks . All the rest were more or less miserable . And they had so much to make them happy , too . All their work was over at eight in the morning , and for the rest of the day they could lie on their backs and smoke Canteen-plug and swear at the punkah-coolies . They enjoyed a fine , full flesh meal in the middle of the day , and then threw themselves down on their cots and sweated and slept till it was cool enough to go out with their `` towny , '' whose vocabulary contained less than six hundred words , and the Adjective , and whose views on every conceivable question they had heard many times before . There was the Canteen , of course , and there was the Temperance Room with the second-hand papers in it ; but a man of any profession can not read for eight hours a day in a temperature of 96 degrees or 98 degrees in the shade , running up sometimes to 103 degrees at midnight . Very few men , even though they get a pannikin of flat , stale , muddy beer and hide it under their cots , can continue drinking for six hours a day .