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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.
Ebd
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Chapter 23
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
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