The recruiting sergeant was on hand and Sergeant Halligan explained Kettle's martial enthusiasm.
Something like a wink passed between Sergeant Halligan and Gully, the recruiting sergeant, who agreed to enlist Kettle, under the name of Solomon Ezekiel Pickup, as a unit in the army of the United States.
A sudden illumination came to Kettle.

"Yon c'yarn' enlist me in no white regiment," cried Kettle to Sergeant Halligan, "I'm a nigger and you have to put me in a nigger regiment." "Oh, that's all right," responded Sergeant Halligan, airily, "we can get you in all right, and we'll be proud to have you.

Won't we, Gully ?" "Certainly," replied Sergeant Gully, "we can fix that up.

It's fixed up already." The rapidity of the proceedings rather startled Kettle.
"But doan' the doctor have to thump me, and pound me, and count my teeth ?" he asked.

Kettle had not spent twenty years at army posts without finding out something.
"No, indeed," answered Sergeant Gully, who was a chum of Sergeant Halligan, "not with such a husky feller as you.