The Little Regiment

by Stephen Crane

IThe fog made the clothes of the men of the column in the roadway seemof a luminous quality. It imparted to the heavy infantry overcoats a newcolour, a kind of blue which was so pale that a regiment might have beenmerely a long, low shadow in the mist. However, a muttering, one partgrumble, three parts joke, hovered in the air above the thick ranks, andblended in an undertoned roar, which was the voice of the column.The town on the southern shore of the little river loomed spectrally, afaint etching upon the grey cloud-masses which were shifting with oilylanguor. A long row of guns upon the northern bank had been pitiless intheir hatred, but a little battered belfry could be dimly seen stillpointing with invincible resolution toward the heavens.The enclouded air vibrated with noises made by hidden colossal things.The infantry tramplings, the heavy rumbling of the artillery, made theearth speak of gigantic preparation. Guns on distant heights thunderedfrom time to time with sudden, nervous roar, as if unable to endure insilence a knowledge of hostile troops massing, other guns going toposition. These sounds, near and remote, defined an immense battle-ground, described the tremendous width of the stage of the prospectivedrama. The voices of the guns, slightly casual, unexcited in theirchallenges and warnings, could not destroy the unutterable eloquence ofthe word in the air, a meaning of impending struggle which made thebreath halt at the lips.The column in the roadway was ankle-deep in mud. The men swore piouslyat the rain which drizzled upon them, compelling them to stand alwaysvery erect in fear of the drops that would sweep in under their coat-collars. The fog was as cold as wet cloths. The men stuffed their handsdeep in their pockets, and huddled their muskets in their arms. Themachinery of orders had rooted these soldiers deeply into the mud,precisely as almighty nature roots mullein stalks.They listened and speculated when a tumult of fighting came from thedim town across the river. When the noise lulled for a time they resumedtheir descriptions of the mud and graphically exaggerated the number ofhours they had been kept waiting. The general commanding their divisionrode along the ranks, and they cheered admiringly, affectionately,crying out to him gleeful prophecies of the coming battle. Each manscanned him with a peculiarly keen personal interest, and afterwardspoke of him with unquestioning devotion and confidence, narratinganecdotes which were mainly untrue.When the jokers lifted the shrill voices which invariably belonged tothem, flinging witticisms at their comrades, a loud laugh would sweepfrom rank to rank, and soldiers who had not heard would lean forward anddemand repetition. When were borne past them some wounded men with greyand blood-smeared faces, and eyes that rolled in that helplessbeseeching for assistance from the sky which comes with supreme pain,the soldiers in the mud watched intently, and from time to time asked ofthe bearers an account of the affair. Frequently they bragged of theircorps, their division, their brigade, their regiment. Anon they referredto the mud and the cold drizzle. Upon this threshold of a wild scene ofdeath they, in short, defied the proportion of events with thatsplendour of heedlessness which belongs only to veterans."Like a lot of wooden soldiers," swore Billie Dempster, moving his feetin the thick mass, and casting a vindictive glance indefinitely:"standing in the mud for a hundred years.""Oh, shut up!" murmured his brother Dan. The manner of his wordsimplied that this fraternal voice near him was an indescribable bore."Why should I shut up?" demanded Billie."Because you're a fool," cried Dan, taking no time to debate it; "thebiggest fool in the regiment."There was but one man between them, and he was habituated. Theseinsults from brother to brother had swept across his chest, flown pasthis face, many times during two long campaigns. Upon this occasion hesimply grinned first at one, then at the other.The way of these brothers was not an unknown topic in regimentalgossip. They had enlisted simultaneously, with each sneering loudly atthe other for doing it. They left their little town, and went forwardwith the flag, exchanging protestations of undying suspicion. In thecamp life they so openly despised each other that, when entertainingquarrels were lacking, their companions often contrived situationscalculated to bring forth display of this fraternal dislike.Both were large-limbed, strong young men, and often fought with friendsin camp unless one was near to interfere with the other. This latterhappened rather frequently, because Dan, preposterously willing for anymanner of combat, had a very great horror of seeing Billie in a fight;and Billie, almost odiously ready himself, simply refused to see Danstripped to his shirt and with his fists aloft. This sat queerly uponthem, and made them the objects of plots.When Dan jumped through a ring of eager soldiers and dragged forth hisraving brother by the arm, a thing often predicted would almost come topass. When Billie performed the same office for Dan, the predictionwould again miss fulfilment by an inch. But indeed they never foughttogether, although they were perpetually upon the verge.They expressed longing for such conflict. As a matter of truth, theyhad at one time made full arrangement for it, but even with theencouragement and interest of half of the regiment they somehow failedto achieve collision.If Dan became a victim of police duty, no jeering was so destructive tothe feelings as Billie's comment. If Billie got a call to appear at theheadquarters, none would so genially prophesy his complete undoing asDan. Small misfortunes to one were, in truth, invariably greeted withhilarity by the other, who seemed to see in them great re-enforcement ofhis opinion.As soldiers, they expressed each for each a scorn intense and blasting.After a certain battle, Billie was promoted to corporal. When Dan wastold of it, he seemed smitten dumb with astonishment and patrioticindignation. He stared in silence, while the dark blood rushed toBillie's forehead, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot. Dan atlast found his tongue, and said: "Well, I'm durned!" If he had heardthat an army mule had been appointed to the post of corps commander, histone could not have had more derision in it. Afterward, he adopted afervid insubordination, an almost religious reluctance to obey the newcorporal's orders, which came near to developing the desired strife.It is here finally to be recorded also that Dan, most ferociouslyprofane in speech, very rarely swore in the presence of his brother; andthat Billie, whose oaths came from his lips with the grace of fallingpebbles, was seldom known to express himself in this manner when nearhis brother Dan.At last the afternoon contained a suggestion of evening. Metallic criesrang suddenly from end to end of the column. They inspired at once aquick, business-like adjustment. The long thing stirred in the mud. Themen had hushed, and were looking across the river. A moment later theshadowy mass of pale blue figures was moving steadily toward the stream.There could be heard from the town a clash of swift fighting andcheering. The noise of the shooting coming through the heavy air had itssharpness taken from it, and sounded in thuds.There was a halt upon the bank above the pontoons. When the column wentwinding down the incline, and streamed out upon the bridge, the fog hadfaded to a great degree, and in the clearer dusk the guns on a distantridge were enabled to perceive the crossing. The long whirling outcriesof the shells came into the air above the men. An occasional solid shotstruck the surface of the river, and dashed into view a sudden verticaljet. The distance was subtly illuminated by the lightning from the deep-booming guns. One by one the batteries on the northern shore aroused,the innumerable guns bellowing in angry oration at the distant ridge.The rolling thunder crashed and reverberated as a wild surf sounds on astill night, and to this music the column marched across the pontoons.The waters of the grim river curled away in a smile from the ends ofthe great boats, and slid swiftly beneath the planking. The dark,riddled walls of the town upreared before the troops, and from a regionhidden by these hammered and tumbled houses came incessantly the yellsand firings of a prolonged and close skirmish.When Dan had called his brother a fool, his voice had been so decisive,so brightly assured, that many men had laughed, considering it to begreat humour under the circumstances. The incident happened to rankledeep in Billie. It was not any strange thing that his brother had calledhim a fool. In fact, he often called him a fool with exactly the sameamount of cheerful and prompt conviction, and before large audiences,too. Billie wondered in his own mind why he took such profound offencein this case; but, at any rate, as he slid down the bank and on to thebridge with his regiment, he was searching his knowledge for somethingthat would pierce Dan's blithesome spirit. But he could contrive nothingat this time, and his impotency made the glance which he was once ableto give his brother still more malignant.The guns far and near were roaring a fearful and grand introduction forthis column which was marching upon the stage of death. Billie felt it,but only in a numb way. His heart was cased in that curious dissonantmetal which covers a man's emotions at such times. The terrible voicesfrom the hills told him that in this wide conflict his life was aninsignificant fact, and that his death would be an insignificant fact.They portended the whirlwind to which he would be as necessary as abutterfly's waved wing. The solemnity, the sadness of it came nearenough to make him wonder why he was neither solemn nor sad. When hismind vaguely adjusted events according to their importance to him, itappeared that the uppermost thing was the fact that upon the eve ofbattle, and before many comrades, his brother had called him a fool.Dan was in a particularly happy mood. "Hurray! Look at 'em shoot," hesaid, when the long witches' croon of the shells came into the air. Itenraged Billie when he felt the little thorn in him, and saw at the sametime that his brother had completely forgotten it.The column went from the bridge into more mud. At this southern endthere was a chaos of hoarse directions and commands. Darkness was comingupon the earth, and regiments were being hurried up the slippery bank.As Billie floundered in the black mud, amid the swearing, sliding crowd,he suddenly resolved that, in the absence of other means of hurting Dan,he would avoid looking at him, refrain from speaking to him, payabsolutely no heed to his existence; and this done skilfully would, heimagined, soon reduce his brother to a poignant sensitiveness.At the top of the bank the column again halted and rearranged itself,as a man after a climb rearranges his clothing. Presently the greatsteel-backed brigade, an infinitely graceful thing in the rhythm andease of its veteran movement, swung up a little narrow, slanting street.Evening had come so swiftly that the fighting on the remote borders ofthe town was indicated by thin flashes of flame. Some building was onfire, and its reflection upon the clouds was an oval of delicate pink.IIAll demeanour of rural serenity had been wrenched violently from thelittle town by the guns and by the waves of men which had surged throughit. The hand of war laid upon this village had in an instant changed itto a thing of remnants. It resembled the place of a monstrous shaking ofthe earth itself. The windows, now mere unsightly holes, made thetumbled and blackened dwellings seem skeletons. Doors lay splintered tofragments. Chimneys had flung their bricks everywhere. The artilleryfire had not neglected the rows of gentle shade-trees which had linedthe streets. Branches and heavy trunks cluttered the mud in driftwoodtangles, while a few shattered forms had contrived to remain dejectedly,mournfully upright. They expressed an innocence, a helplessness, whichperforce created a pity for their happening into this caldron of battle.Furthermore, there was under foot a vast collection of odd thingsreminiscent of the charge, the fight, the retreat. There were boxes andbarrels filled with earth, behind which riflemen had lain snugly, and inthese little trenches were the dead in blue with the dead in grey, theposes eloquent of the struggles for possession of the town, until thehistory of the whole conflict was written plainly in the streets.And yet the spirit of this little city, its quaint individuality,poised in the air above the ruins, defying the guns, the sweepingvolleys; holding in contempt those avaricious blazes which had attackedmany dwellings. The hard earthen sidewalks proclaimed the games that hadbeen played there during long lazy days, in the careful, shadows of thetrees. "General Merchandise," in faint letters upon a long board, had tobe read with a slanted glance, for the sign dangled by one end; but theporch of the old store was a palpable legend of wide-hatted men, smoking.This subtle essence, this soul of the life that had been, brushed likeinvisible wings the thoughts of the men in the swift columns that cameup from the river.In the darkness a loud and endless humming arose from the great bluecrowds bivouacked in the streets. From time to time a sharp spatter offiring from far picket lines entered this bass chorus. The smell fromthe smouldering ruins floated on the cold night breeze.Dan, seated ruefully upon the doorstep of a shot-pierced house, wasproclaiming the campaign badly managed. Orders had been issuedforbidding camp-fires.Suddenly he ceased his oration, and scanning the group of his comrades,said: "Where's Billie? Do you know?""Gone on picket.""Get out! Has he?" said Dan. "No business to go on picket. Why don'tsome of them other corporals take their turn?"A bearded private was smoking his pipe of confiscated tobacco, seatedcomfortably upon a horse-hair trunk which he had dragged from the house.He observed: "Was his turn.""No such thing," cried Dan. He and the man on the horse-hair trunk helddiscussion in which Dan stoutly maintained that if his brother had beensent on picket it was an injustice. He ceased his argument when anothersoldier, upon whose arms could faintly be seen the two stripes of acorporal, entered the circle. "Humph," said Dan, "where you been?"The corporal made no answer. Presently Dan said: "Billie, where youbeen?"His brother did not seem to hear these inquiries. He glanced at thehouse which towered above them, and remarked casually to the man on thehorse-hair trunk: "Funny, ain't it? After the pelting this town got,you'd think there wouldn't be one brick left on another.""Oh," said Dan, glowering at his brother's back. "Getting mighty smart,ain't you?"The absence of camp-fires allowed the evening to make apparent itsquality of faint silver light in which the blue clothes of the throngbecame black, and the faces became white expanses, void of expression.There was considerable excitement a short distance from the group aroundthe doorstep. A soldier had chanced upon a hoop-skirt, and arrayed in ithe was performing a dance amid the applause of his companions. Billieand a greater part of the men immediately poured over there to witnessthe exhibition."What's the matter with Billie?" demanded Dan of the man upon the horse-hair trunk."How do I know?" rejoined the other in mild resentment. He arose andwalked away. When he returned he said briefly, in a weather-wise tone,that it would rain during the night.Dan took a seat upon one end of the horse-hair trunk. He was facing thecrowd around the dancer, which in its hilarity swung this way and thatway. At times he imagined that he could recognise his brother's face.He and the man on the other end of the trunk thoughtfully talked of thearmy's position. To their minds, infantry and artillery were in a mostprecarious jumble in the streets of the town; but they did not grownervous over it, for they were used to having the army appear in aprecarious jumble to their minds. They had learned to accept suchpuzzling situations as a consequence of their position in the ranks, andwere now usually in possession of a simple but perfectly immovable faiththat somebody understood the jumble. Even if they had been convincedthat the army was a headless monster, they would merely have nodded withthe veteran's singular cynicism. It was none of their business assoldiers. Their duty was to grab sleep and food when occasion permitted,and cheerfully fight wherever their feet were planted until more orderscame. This was a task sufficiently absorbing.They spoke of other corps, and this talk being confidential, theirvoices dropped to tones of awe. "The Ninth"--"The First"--"The Fifth"--"The Sixth"--"The Third"--the simple numerals rang with eloquence, eachhaving a meaning which was to float through many years as no intangiblearithmetical mist, but as pregnant with individuality as the names ofcities.Of their own corps they spoke with a deep veneration, an idolatry, asupreme confidence which apparently would not blanch to see it matchagainst everything.It was as if their respect for other corps was due partly to a wonderthat organisations not blessed with their own famous numeral could takesuch an interest in war. They could prove that their division was thebest in the corps, and that their brigade was the best in the division.And their regiment--it was plain that no fortune of life was equal tothe chance which caused a man to be born, so to speak, into thiscommand, the keystone of the defending arch.At times Dan covered with insults the character of a vague, unnamedgeneral to whose petulance and busy-body spirit he ascribed the orderwhich made hot coffee impossible.Dan said that victory was certain in the coming battle. The other manseemed rather dubious. He remarked upon the fortified line of hills,which had impressed him even from the other side of the river. "Shucks,"said Dan. "Why, we----" He pictured a splendid overflowing of thesehills by the sea of men in blue. During the period of this conversationDan's glance searched the merry throng about the dancer. Above thebabble of voices in the street a far-away thunder could sometimes beheard--evidently from the very edge of the horizon--the boom-boom ofrestless guns.IIIUltimately the night deepened to the tone of black velvet. The outlinesof the fireless camp were like the faint drawings upon ancient tapestry.The glint of a rifle, the, shine of a button, might have been of threadsof silver and gold sewn upon the fabric of the night. There was littlepresented to the vision, but to a sense more subtle there wasdiscernible in the atmosphere something like a pulse; a mystic beatingwhich would have told a stranger of the presence of a giant thing--theslumbering mass of regiments and batteries.With tires forbidden, the floor of a dry old kitchen was thought to bea good exchange for the cold earth of December, even if a shell hadexploded in it, and knocked it so out of shape that when a man laycurled in his blanket his last waking thought was likely to be of thewall that bellied out above him, as if strongly anxious to topple uponthe score of soldiers.Billie looked at the bricks ever about to descend in a shower upon hisface, listened to the industrious pickets plying their rifles on theborder of the town, imagined some measure of the din of the comingbattle, thought of Dan and Dan's chagrin, and rolling over in hisblanket went to sleep with satisfaction.At an unknown hour he was aroused by the creaking of boards. Liftinghimself upon his elbow, he saw a sergeant prowling among the sleepingforms. The sergeant carried a candle in an old brass candlestick. Hewould have resembled some old farmer on an unusual midnight tour if itwere not for the significance of his gleaming buttons and striped sleeves.Billie blinked stupidly at the light until his mind returned from thejourneys of slumber. The sergeant stooped among the unconscioussoldiers, holding the candle close, and peering into each face."Hello, Haines," said Billie. "Relief?""Hello, Billie," said the sergeant. "Special duty.""Dan got to go?""Jameson, Hunter, McCormack, D. Dempster. Yes. Where is he?""Over there by the winder," said Billie, gesturing. "What is it for,Haines?""You don't think I know, do you?" demanded the sergeant. He began topipe sharply but cheerily at men upon the floor. "Come, Mac, get uphere. Here's a special for you. Wake up, Jameson. Come along, Dannie, meboy."Each man at once took this call to duty as a personal affront. Theypulled themselves out of their blankets, rubbed their eyes, and swore atwhoever was responsible. "Them's orders," cried the sergeant. "Come! Getout of here." An undetailed head with dishevelled hair thrust out from ablanket, and a sleepy voice said: "Shut up, Haines, and go home."When the detail clanked out of the kitchen, all but one of theremaining men seemed to be again asleep. Billie, leaning on his elbow,was gazing into darkness. When the footsteps died to silence, he curledhimself into his blanket.At the first cool lavender lights of daybreak he aroused again, andscanned his recumbent companions. Seeing a wakeful one he asked: "Is Danback yet?"The man said: "Hain't seen 'im."Billie put both hands behind his head, and scowled into the air. "Can'tsee the use of these cussed details in the night-time," he muttered inhis most unreasonable tones. "Darn nuisances. Why can't they----" Hegrumbled at length and graphically.When Dan entered with the squad, however, Billie was convincingly asleep.IVThe regiment trotted in double time along the street, and the colonelseemed to quarrel over the right of way with many artillery officers.Batteries were waiting in the mud, and the men of them, exasperated bythe bustle of this ambitious infantry, shook their fists from saddle andcaisson, exchanging all manner of taunts and jests. The slanted gunscontinued to look reflectively at the ground.On the outskirts of the crumbled town a fringe of blue figures werefiring into the fog. The regiment swung out into skirmish lines, and thefringe of blue figures departed, turning their backs and going joyfullyaround the flank.The bullets began a low moan off toward a ridge which loomed faintly inthe heavy mist. When the swift crescendo had reached its climax, themissiles zipped just overhead, as if piercing an invisible curtain. Abattery on the hill was crashing with such tumult that it was as if theguns had quarrelled and had fallen pell-mell and snarling upon eachother. The shells howled on their journey toward the town. From short-range distance there came a spatter of musketry, sweeping along aninvisible line, and making faint sheets of orange light.Some in the new skirmish lines were beginning to fire at variousshadows discerned in the vapour, forms of men suddenly revealed by somehumour of the laggard masses of clouds. The crackle of musketry began todominate the purring of the hostile bullets. Dan, in the front rank,held his rifle poised, and looked into the fog keenly, coldly, with theair of a sportsman. His nerves were so steady that it was as if they hadbeen drawn from his body, leaving him merely a muscular machine; but hisnumb heart was somehow beating to the pealing march of the fight.The waving skirmish line went backward and forward, ran this way andthat way. Men got lost in the fog, and men were found again. Once theygot too close to the formidable ridge, and the thing burst out as ifrepulsing a general attack. Once another blue regiment was apprehendedon the very edge of firing into them. Once a friendly battery began anelaborate and scientific process of extermination. Always as busy asbrokers, the men slid here and there over the plain, fighting theirfoes, escaping from their friends, leaving a history of many movementsin the wet yellow turf, cursing the atmosphere, blazing away every timethey could identify the enemy.In one mystic changing of the fog as if the fingers of spirits weredrawing aside these draperies, a small group of the grey skirmishers,silent, statuesque, were suddenly disclosed to Dan and those about him.So vivid and near were they that there was something uncanny in therevelation.There might have been a second of mutual staring. Then each rifle ineach group was at the shoulder. As Dan's glance flashed along the barrelof his weapon, the figure of a man suddenly loomed as if the musket hadbeen a telescope. The short black beard, the slouch hat, the pose of theman as he sighted to shoot, made a quick picture in Dan's mind. The samemoment, it would seem, he pulled his own trigger, and the man, smitten,lurched forward, while his exploding rifle made a slanting crimsonstreak in the air, and the slouch hat fell before the body. The billowsof the fog, governed by singular impulses, rolled between."You got that feller sure enough," said a comrade to Dan. Dan looked athim absent-mindedly.VWhen the next morning calmly displayed another fog, the men of theregiment exchanged eloquent comments; but they did not abuse it atlength, because the streets of the town now contained enough gallopingaides to make three troops of cavalry, and they knew that they had cometo the verge of the great fight.Dan conversed with the man who had once possessed a horse-hair trunk;but they did not mention the line of hills which had furnished them inmore careless moments with an agreeable topic. They avoided it now ascondemned men do the subject of death, and yet the thought of it stayedin their eyes as they looked at each other and talked gravely of otherthings.The expectant regiment heaved a long sigh of relief when the sharpcall: "Fall in," repeated indefinitely, arose in the streets. It wasinevitable that a bloody battle was to be fought, and they wanted to getit off their minds. They were, however, doomed again to spend a longperiod planted firmly in the mud. They craned their necks, and wonderedwhere some of the other regiments were going.At last the mists rolled carelessly away. Nature made at this time allprovisions to enable foes to see each other, and immediately the roar ofguns resounded from every hill. The endless cracking of the skirmishersswelled to rolling crashes of musketry. Shells screamed with panther-like noises at the houses. Dan looked at the man of the horse-hairtrunk, and the man said: "Well, here she comes!"The tenor voices of younger officers and the deep and hoarse voices ofthe older ones rang in the streets. These cries pricked like spurs. Themasses of men vibrated from the suddenness with which they were plungedinto the situation of troops about to fight. That the orders were long-expected did not concern the emotion.Simultaneous movement was imparted to all these thick bodies of men andhorses that lay in the town. Regiment after regiment swung rapidly intothe streets that faced the sinister ridge.This exodus was theatrical. The little sober-hued village had been likethe cloak which disguises the king of drama. It was now put aside, andan army, splendid thing of steel and blue, stood forth in the sunlight.Even the soldiers in the heavy columns drew deep breaths at the sight,more majestic than they had dreamed. The heights of the enemy's positionwere crowded with men who resembled people come to witness some mightypageant. But as the column moved steadily to their positions, the guns,matter-of-fact warriors, doubled their number, and shells burst with redthrilling tumult on the crowded plain. One came into the ranks of theregiment, and after the smoke and the wrath of it had faded, leavingmotionless figures, every one stormed according to the limits of hisvocabulary, for veterans detest being killed when they are not busy.The regiment sometimes looked sideways at its brigade companionscomposed of men who had never been in battle; but no frozen blood couldwithstand the heat of the splendour of this army before the eyes on theplain, these lines so long that the flanks were little streaks, thismass of men of one intention. The recruits carried themselvesheedlessly. At the rear was an idle battery, and three artillerymen in afoolish row on a caisson nudged each other and grinned at the recruits."You'll catch it pretty soon," they called out. They were impersonallygleeful, as if they themselves were not also likely to catch it prettysoon. But with this picture of an army in their hearts, the new menperhaps felt the devotion which the drops may feel for the wave; theywere of its power and glory; they smiled jauntily at the foolish row ofgunners, and told them to go to blazes.The column trotted across some little bridges, and spread quickly intolines of battle. Before them was a bit of plain, and back of the plainwas the ridge. There was no time left for considerations. The men werestaring at the plain, mightily wondering how it would feel to be outthere, when a brigade in advance yelled and charged. The hill was allgrey smoke and fire-points.That fierce elation in the terrors of war, catching a man's heart andmaking it burn with such ardour that he becomes capable of dying,flashed in the faces of the men like coloured lights, and made themresemble leashed animals, eager, ferocious, daunting at nothing. Theline was really in its first leap before the wild, hoarse crying of theorders.The greed for close quarters, which is the emotion of a bayonet charge,came then into the minds of the men and developed until it was amadness. The field, with its faded grass of a Southern winter, seemed tothis fury miles in width.High, slow-moving masses of smoke, with an odour of burning cotton,engulfed the line until the men might have been swimmers. Before themthe ridge, the shore of this grey sea, was outlined, crossed, andrecrossed by sheets of flame. The howl of the battle arose to the noiseof innumerable wind demons.The line, galloping, scrambling, plunging like a herd of woundedhorses, went over a field that was sown with corpses, the records ofother charges.Directly in front of the black-faced, whooping Dan, carousing in thisonward sweep like a new kind of fiend, a wounded man appeared, raisinghis shattered body, and staring at this rush of men down upon him. Itseemed to occur to him that he was to be trampled; he made a desperate,piteous effort to escape; then finally huddled in a waiting heap. Danand the soldier near him widened the interval between them withoutlooking down, without appearing to heed the wounded man. This littleclump of blue seemed to reel past them as boulders reel past a train.Bursting through a smoke-wave, the scampering, unformed bunches cameupon the wreck of the brigade that had preceded them, a floundering massstopped afar from the hill by the swirling volleys.It was as if a necromancer had suddenly shown them a picture of thefate which awaited them; but the line with muscular spasm hurled itselfover this wreckage and onward, until men were stumbling amid the relicsof other assaults, the point where the fire from the ridge consumed.The men, panting, perspiring, with crazed faces, tried to push againstit; but it was as if they had come to a wall. The wave halted, shudderedin an agony from the quick struggle of its two desires, then toppled,and broke into a fragmentary thing which has no name.Veterans could now at last be distinguished from recruits. The newregiments were instantly gone, lost, scattered, as if they never hadbeen. But the sweeping failure of the charge, the battle, could not makethe veterans forget their business. With a last throe, the band ofmaniacs drew itself up and blazed a volley at the hill, insignificant tothose iron entrenchments, but nevertheless expressing that singularfinal despair which enables men coolly to defy the walls of a city ofdeath.After this episode the men renamed their command. They called it theLittle Regiment.VI"I seen Dan shoot a feller yesterday. Yes, sir. I'm sure it was himthat done it. And maybe he thinks about that feller now, and wonders ifhe tumbled down just about the same way. Them things come up in a man'smind."Bivouac fires upon the sidewalks, in the streets, in the yards, threwhigh their wavering reflections, which examined, like slim, red fingers,the dingy, scarred walls and the piles of tumbled brick. The droning ofvoices again arose from great blue crowds.The odour of frying bacon, the fragrance from countless little coffee-pails floated among the ruins. The rifles, stacked in the shadows,emitted flashes of steely light. Wherever a flag lay horizontally fromone stack to another was the bed of an eagle which had led men into themystic smoke.The men about a particular fire were engaged in holding in check theirjovial spirits. They moved whispering around the blaze, although theylooked at it with a certain fine contentment, like labourers after aday's hard work.There was one who sat apart. They did not address him save in tonessuddenly changed. They did not regard him directly, but always in littlesidelong glances.At last a soldier from a distant fire came into this circle of light.He studied for a time the man who sat apart. Then he hesitatinglystepped closer, and said: "Got any news, Dan?""No," said Dan.The new-comer shifted his feet. He looked at the fire, at the sky, atthe other men, at Dan. His face expressed a curious despair; his tonguewas plainly in rebellion. Finally, however, he contrived to say: "Well,there's some chance yet, Dan. Lots of the wounded are still lying outthere, you know. There's some chance yet.""Yes," said Dan.The soldier shifted his feet again, and looked miserably into the air.After another struggle he said: "Well, there's some chance yet, Dan." Hemoved hastily away.One of the men of the squad, perhaps encouraged by this example, nowapproached the still figure. "No news yet, hey?" he said, after coughingbehind his hand."No," said Dan."Well," said the man, "I've been thinking of how he was fretting aboutyou the night you went on special duty. You recollect? Well, sir, I wassurprised. He couldn't say enough about it. I swan, I don't believe heslep' a wink after you left, but just lay awake cussing special duty andworrying. I was surprised. But there he lay cussing. He----"Dan made a curious sound, as if a stone had wedged in his throat. Hesaid: "Shut up, will you?"Afterward the men would not allow this moody contemplation of the fireto be interrupted."Oh, let him alone, can't you?""Come away from there, Casey!""Say, can't you leave him be?"They moved with reverence about the immovable figure, with itscountenance of mask-like invulnerability.VIIAfter the red round eye of the sun had stared long at the little plainand its burden, darkness, a sable mercy, came heavily upon it, and thewan hands of the dead were no longer seen in strange frozen gestures.The heights in front of the plain shone with tiny camp-fires, and fromthe town in the rear, small shimmerings ascended from the blazes of thebivouac. The plain was a black expanse upon which, from time to time,dots of light, lanterns, floated slowly here and there. These fieldswere long steeped in grim mystery.Suddenly, upon one dark spot, there was a resurrection. A strange thinghad been groaning there, prostrate. Then it suddenly dragged itself to asitting posture, and became a man.The man stared stupidly for a moment at the lights on the hill, thenturned and contemplated the faint colouring over the town. For somemoments he remained thus, staring with dull eyes, his face unemotional,wooden.Finally he looked around him at the corpses dimly to be seen. No changeflashed into his face upon viewing these men. They seemed to suggestmerely that his information concerning himself was not too complete. Heran his fingers over his arms and chest, bearing always the air of anidiot upon a bench at an almshouse door.Finding no wound in his arms nor in his chest, he raised his hand tohis head, and the fingers came away with some dark liquid upon them.Holding these fingers close to his eyes, he scanned them in the samestupid fashion, while his body gently swayed.The soldier rolled his eyes again toward the town. When he arose, hisclothing peeled from the frozen ground like wet paper. Hearing the soundof it, he seemed to see reason for deliberation. He paused and looked atthe ground, then at his trousers, then at the ground.Finally he went slowly off toward the faint reflection, holding hishands palm outward before him, and walking in the manner of a blind man.VIIIThe immovable Dan again sat unaddressed in the midst of comrades, whodid not joke aloud. The dampness of the usual morning fog seemed to makethe little camp-fires furious.Suddenly a cry arose in the streets, a shout of amazement and delight.The men making breakfast at the fire looked up quickly. They broke forthin clamorous exclamation: "Well! Of all things! Dan! Dan! Look who'scoming! Oh, Dan!"Dan the silent raised his eyes and saw a man, with a bandage of thesize of a helmet about his head, receiving a furious demonstration fromthe company. He was shaking hands, and explaining, and haranguing to ahigh degree.Dan started. His face of bronze flushed to his temples. He seemed aboutto leap from the ground, but then suddenly he sank back, and resumed hisimpassive gazing.The men were in a flurry. They looked from one to the other. "Dan!Look! See who's coming!" some cried again. "Dan! Look!"He scowled at last, and moved his shoulders sullenly. "Well, don't Iknow it?"But they could not be convinced that his eyes were in service. "Dan,why can't you look! See who's coming!"He made a gesture then of irritation and rage. "Curse it! Don't I knowit?"The man with a bandage of the size of a helmet moved forward, alwaysshaking hands and explaining. At times his glance wandered to Dan, whosaw with his eyes riveted.After a series of shiftings, it occurred naturally that the man withthe bandage was very near to the man who saw the flames. He paused, andthere was a little silence. Finally he said: "Hello, Dan.""Hello, Billie."

Previous Authors：The End of the Battle Next Authors：The Mesmeric Mountain