The task of the two medical officers was a trying one. Day after day they labored at the monotonous physical examinations, until they practically became worn out. Including recruits drafted to fill the vacant places made by rejections for business and family reasons or physical deficiencies, they were obliged to pass upon the qualifications of nearly nine hundred officers and men. It should be recorded, to the credit of the battery commanders as recruiting officers, that rejections for physical causes were few and far between, the rigid examination finding but one officer and fifteen men—a surprisingly small number—unfit for duty. General sympathy was felt for those sent away by the surgeons, for without exception they were men whose desire to go out with the regiment was of the keenest. But during all the uncertainty as to the final disposition of the regiment, as well as while the work of transferring it from the militia to the volunteer service was in progress, the garrison duty for which it had been so hastily summoned was not neglected for a moment. On the 27th of April, the day after the command reported at the fort, the batteries had been assigned to their fighting-stations, and steady drill at the guns had begun. The drill was no light matter; excluding the ceremonies of guard-mounting and evening parade, the regimental order called for four hours and a half daily of solid work at the heavy guns, and that work was performed with an energy never shown at the annual tours of instruction in time of peace. On the many days when weather conditions kept the men from the parapets, schools of instruction were held in quarters, for the study of guard duty, of army regulations, and other matters of the sort. By April 30th, the regimental signal corps, made up of twelve non-commissioned officers and thirty-six privates, under the signal officer with an assistant, had been fully organized, and was steadily employed in wig-wagging. On May 1st, the light regimental guard mounted during the first few days of the tour was replaced by a strong guard of two officers with fifty-seven non-commissioned officers and privates. From these, details were made for the patrol-boat crews, and reliefs were furnished for the chain of posts by which the island was surrounded.