These latter braced their energies for a great struggle.Often, white clinched teeth shone from the dusky faces.Many heads surged to and fro,floating upon a pale sea of smoke.Those behind the fence frequently shouted and yelped in taunts and gibelike cries, but the regiment maintained a stressed silence. Perhaps, at this new assault the men recalled the fact that they had been named mud diggers, and it made their situation thrice bitter. They were breathlessly intent upon keeping the ground and thrusting away the rejoicing body of the enemy. They fought swiftly and with a despairing savageness denoted in their expressions.
The youth had resolved not to budge whatever should happen.Some arrows of scorn that had buried themselves in his heart had generated strange and unspeakable hatred. It was clear to him that his final and absolute revenge was to be achieved by his dead body lying, torn and gluttering, upon the field. This was to be a poignant retaliation upon the officer who had said “mule drivers,” and later “mud diggers,” for in all the wild graspings of his mind for a unit responsible for his sufferings and commotions he always seized upon the man who had dubbed him wrongly. And it was his idea, vaguely formulated, that his corpse would be for those eyes a great and salt reproach.
The regiment bled extravagantly.Grunting bundles of blue began to drop.The orderly sergeant of the youth’s company was shot through the cheeks.Its supports being injured, his jaw hung afar down,disclosing in the wide cavern of his mouth a pulsing mass of blood and teeth.And with it all he made attempts to cry out.In his endeavor there was a dreadful earnestness,as if he conceived that one great shriek would make him well.
The youth saw him presently go rearward.His strength seemed in nowise impaired. He ran swiftly,casting wild glances for succor.
Others fell down about the feet of their companions.Some of the wounded crawled out and away,but many lay still,their bodies twisted into impossible shapes.
The youth looked once for his friend.He saw a vehement young man,powder-smeared and frowzled, whom he knew to be him.The lieutenant, also,was unscathed in his position at the rear.He had continued to curse,but it was now with the air of a man who was using his last box of oaths.
For the fire of the regiment had begun to wane and drip.The robust voice, that had come strangely from the thin ranks,was growing rapidly weak.
Chapter XXIII.
The colonel came running along the back of the line.There were other officers following him. “We must charge ’m!” they shouted. “We must charge ’m!” they cried with resentful voices,as if anticipating a rebellion against this plan by the men.
The youth, upon hearing the shouts,began to study the distance between him and the enemy.He made vague calculations.He saw that to be firm soldiers they must go forward.It would be death to stay in the present place,and with all the circumstances to go backward would exalt too many others.Their hope was to push the galling foes away from the fence.
He expected that his companions, weary and stiffened,would have to be driven to this assault,but as he turned toward them he perceived with a certain surprise that they were giving quick and unqualified expressions of assent. There was an ominous, clanging overture to the charge when the shafts of the bayonets rattled upon the rifle barrels. At the yelled words of command the soldiers sprang forward in eager leaps. There was new and unexpected force in the movement of the regiment. A knowledge of its faded and jaded condition made the charge appear like a paroxysm, a display of the strength that comes before a final feebleness. The men scampered in insane fever of haste, racing as if to achieve a sudden success before an exhilarating fluid should leave them. It was a blind and despairing rush by the collection of men in dusty and tattered blue, over a green sward and under a sapphire sky, toward a fence, dimly outlined in smoke, from behind which sputtered the fierce rifles of enemies.
The youth kept the bright colors to the front.He was waving his free arm in furious circles,the while shrieking mad calls and appeals,urging on those that did not need to be urged,for it seemed that the mob of blue men hurling themselves on the dangerous group of rifles were again grown suddenly wild with an enthusiasm of unselfishness. From the many firings starting toward them, it looked as if they would merely succeed in making a great sprinkling of corpses on the grass between their former position and the fence. But they were in a state of frenzy, perhaps because of forgotten vanities, and it made an exhibition of sublime recklessness. There was no obvious questioning, nor figurings, nor diagrams. There was, apparently, no considered loopholes. It appeared that the swift wings of their desires would have shattered against the iron gates of the impossible.
He himself felt the daring spirit of a savage,religion-mad. He was capable of profound sacrifices,a tremendous death. He had no time for dissections,but he knew that he thought of the bullets only as things that could prevent him from reaching the place of his endeavor. There were subtle flashings of joy within him that thus should be his mind.
He strained all his strength.His eyesight was shaken and dazzled by the tension of thought and muscle.He did not see anything excepting the mist of smoke gashed by the little knives of fire, but he knew that in it lay the aged fence of a vanished farmer protecting the snuggled bodies of the gray men.
As he ran a thought of the shock of contact gleamed in his mind.He expected a great concussion when the two bodies of troops crashed together.This became a part of his wild battle madness.He could feel the onward swing of the regiment about him and he conceived of a thunderous, crushing blow that would prostrate the resistance and spread consternation and amazement for miles. The flying regiment was going to have a catapultian effect. This dream made him run faster among his comrades, who were giving vent to hoarse and frantic cheers.
But presently he could see that many of the men in gray did not intend to abide the blow. The smoke, rolling, disclosed men who ran, their faces still turned. These grew to a crowd, who retired stubbornly. Individuals wheeled frequently to send a bullet at the blue wave.
But at one part of the line there was a grim and obdurate group that made no movement. They were settled firmly down behind posts and rails. A flag, ruffled and fierce, waved over them and their rifles dinned fiercely.
The blue whirl of men got very near,until it seemed that in truth there would be a close and frightful scuffle.There was an expressed disdain in the opposition of the little group,that changed the meaning of the cheers of the men in blue.They became yells of wrath, directed, personal.The cries of the two parties were now in sound an interchange of scathing insults.
They in blue showed their teeth;their eyes shone all white.They launched themselves as at the throats of those who stood resisting.The space between dwindled to an insignificant distance.
The youth had centered the gaze of his soul upon that other flag.Its possession would be high pride.It would express bloody minglings, near blows.He had a gigantic hatred for those who made great difficulties and complications. They caused it to be as a craved treasure of mythology, hung amid tasks and contrivances of danger.
He plunged like a mad horse at it.He was resolved it should not escape if wild blows and darings of blows could seize it. His own emblem, quivering and aflare, was winging toward the other. It seemed there would shortly be an encounter of strange beaks and claws, as of eagles.