Chapter: The colonel came running along 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
spluttered 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.

The swirling body of blue men came to a sudden halt at close and
disastrous range and roared a swift volley.  The group in gray was
split and broken by this fire, but its riddled body still fought.  The
men in blue yelled again and rushed in upon it.

The youth, in his leapings, saw, as through a mist, a picture of four
or five men stretched upon the ground or writhing upon their knees with
bowed heads as if they had been stricken by bolts from the sky.
Tottering among them was the rival color bearer, whom the youth saw had
been bitten vitally by the bullets of the last formidable volley.  He
perceived this man fighting a last struggle, the struggle of one whose
legs are grasped by demons.  It was a ghastly battle. Over his face was
the bleach of death, but set upon it was the dark and hard lines of
desperate purpose.  With this terrible grin of resolution he hugged his
precious flag to him and was stumbling and staggering in his design to
go the way that led to safety for it.

But his wounds always made it seem that his feet were retarded, held,
and he fought a grim fight, as with invisible ghouls fastened greedily
upon his limbs.  Those in advance of the scampering blue men, howling
cheers, leaped at the fence.  The despair of the lost was in his eyes
as he glanced back at them.

The youth's friend went over the obstruction in a tumbling heap and
sprang at the flag as a panther at prey.  He pulled at it and,
wrenching it free, swung up its red brilliancy with a mad cry of
exultation even as the color bearer, gasping, lurched over in a final
throe and, stiffening convulsively, turned his dead face to the ground.
There was much blood upon the grass blades.

At the place of success there began more wild clamorings of cheers. The
men gesticulated and bellowed in an ecstasy.  When they spoke it was as
if they considered their listener to be a mile away.  What hats and
caps were left to them they often slung high in the air.

At one part of the line four men had been swooped upon, and they now
sat as prisoners. Some blue men were about them in an eager and curious
circle.  The soldiers had trapped strange birds, and there was an
examination.  A flurry of fast questions was in the air.

One of the prisoners was nursing a superficial wound in the foot.  He
cuddled it, baby-wise, but he looked up from it often to curse with an
astonishing utter abandon straight at the noses of his captors.  He
consigned them to red regions; he called upon the pestilential wrath of
strange gods.  And with it all he was singularly free from recognition
of the finer points of the conduct of prisoners of war.  It was as if a
clumsy clod had trod upon his toe and he conceived it to be his
privilege, his duty, to use deep, resentful oaths.

Another, who was a boy in years, took his plight with great calmness
and apparent good nature.  He conversed with the men in blue, studying
their faces with his bright and keen eyes.  They spoke of battles and
conditions. There was an acute interest in all their faces during this
exchange of view points.  It seemed a great satisfaction to hear voices
from where all had been darkness and speculation.

The third captive sat with a morose countenance.  He preserved a
stoical and cold attitude. To all advances he made one reply without
variation, "Ah, go t' hell!"

The last of the four was always silent and, for the most part, kept his
face turned in unmolested directions.  From the views the youth
received he seemed to be in a state of absolute dejection.  Shame was
upon him, and with it profound regret that he was, perhaps, no more to
be counted in the ranks of his fellows.  The youth could detect no
expression that would allow him to believe that the other was giving a
thought to his narrowed future, the pictured dungeons, perhaps, and
starvations and brutalities, liable to the imagination.  All to be seen
was shame for captivity and regret for the right to antagonize.

After the men had celebrated sufficiently they settled down behind the
old rail fence, on the opposite side to the one from which their foes
had been driven.  A few shot perfunctorily at distant marks.

There was some long grass.  The youth nestled in it and rested, making
a convenient rail support the flag.  His friend, jubilant and
glorified, holding his treasure with vanity, came to him there.  They
sat side by side and congratulated each other.



The roarings that had stretched in a long line of sound across the face
of the forest began to grow intermittent and weaker.  The stentorian
speeches of the artillery continued in some distant encounter, but the
crashes of the musketry had almost ceased.  The youth and his friend of
a sudden looked up, feeling a deadened form of distress at the waning
of these noises, which had become a part of life.  They could see
changes going on among the troops.  There were marchings this way and
that way.  A battery wheeled leisurely.  On the crest of a small hill
was the thick gleam of many departing muskets.

The youth arose.  "Well, what now, I wonder?" he said.  By his tone he
seemed to be preparing to resent some new monstrosity in the way of
dins and smashes.  He shaded his eyes with his grimy hand and gazed
over the field.

His friend also arose and stared.  "I bet we're goin' t' git along out
of this an' back over th' river," said he.

"Well, I swan!" said the youth.

They waited, watching.  Within a little while the regiment received
orders to retrace its way. The men got up grunting from the grass,
regretting the soft repose.  They jerked their stiffened legs, and
stretched their arms over their heads. One man swore as he rubbed his
eyes.  They all groaned "O Lord!"  They had as many objections to this
change as they would have had to a proposal for a new battle.

They trampled slowly back over the field across which they had run in a
mad scamper.

The regiment marched until it had joined its fellows.  The reformed
brigade, in column, aimed through a wood at the road.  Directly they
were in a mass of dust-covered troops, and were trudging along in a way
parallel to the enemy's lines as these had been defined by the previous
turmoil.

They passed within view of a stolid white house, and saw in front of it
groups of their comrades lying in wait behind a neat breastwork.  A row
of guns were booming at a distant enemy. Shells thrown in reply were
raising clouds of dust and splinters.  Horsemen dashed along the line
of intrenchments.

At this point of its march the division curved away from the field and
went winding off in the direction of the river.  When the significance
of this movement had impressed itself upon the youth he turned his head
and looked over his shoulder toward the trampled and debris-strewed
ground.  He breathed a breath of new satisfaction.  He finally nudged
his friend.  "Well, it's all over," he said to him.

His friend gazed backward.  "B'Gawd, it is," he assented.  They mused.

For a time the youth was obliged to reflect in a puzzled and uncertain
way.  His mind was undergoing a subtle change.  It took moments for it
to cast off its battleful ways and resume its accustomed course of
thought.  Gradually his brain emerged from the clogged clouds, and at
last he was enabled to more closely comprehend himself and circumstance.

He understood then that the existence of shot and counter-shot was in
the past.  He had dwelt in a land of strange, squalling upheavals and
had come forth.  He had been where there was red of blood and black of
passion, and he was escaped.  His first thoughts were given to
rejoicings at this fact.

Later he began to study his deeds, his failures, and his achievements.
Thus, fresh from scenes where many of his usual machines of reflection
had been idle, from where he had proceeded sheeplike, he struggled to
marshal all his acts.

At last they marched before him clearly. From this present view point
he was enabled to look upon them in spectator fashion and to criticise
them with some correctness, for his new condition had already defeated
certain sympathies.

Regarding his procession of memory he felt gleeful and unregretting,
for in it his public deeds were paraded in great and shining
prominence. Those performances which had been witnessed by his fellows
marched now in wide purple and gold, having various deflections.  They
went gayly with music.  It was pleasure to watch these things.  He
spent delightful minutes viewing the gilded images of memory.

He saw that he was good.  He recalled with a thrill of joy the
respectful comments of his fellows upon his conduct.

Nevertheless, the ghost of his flight from the first engagement
appeared to him and danced.  There were small shoutings in his brain
about these matters.  For a moment he blushed, and the light of his
soul flickered with shame.

A specter of reproach came to him.  There loomed the dogging memory of
the tattered soldier--he who, gored by bullets and faint for blood, had
fretted concerning an imagined wound in another; he who had loaned his
last of strength and intellect for the tall soldier; he who, blind with
weariness and pain, had been deserted in the field.

For an instant a wretched chill of sweat was upon him at the thought
that he might be detected in the thing.  As he stood persistently
before his vision, he gave vent to a cry of sharp irritation and agony.

His friend turned.  "What's the matter, Henry?" he demanded.  The
youth's reply was an outburst of crimson oaths.

As he marched along the little branch-hung roadway among his prattling
companions this vision of cruelty brooded over him.  It clung near him
always and darkened his view of these deeds in purple and gold.
Whichever way his thoughts turned they were followed by the somber
phantom of the desertion in the fields. He looked stealthily at his
companions, feeling sure that they must discern in his face evidences
of this pursuit.  But they were plodding in ragged array, discussing
with quick tongues the accomplishments of the late battle.

"Oh, if a man should come up an' ask me, I'd say we got a dum good
lickin'."

"Lickin'--in yer eye!  We ain't licked, sonny. We're goin' down here
aways, swing aroun', an' come in behint 'em."

"Oh, hush, with your comin' in behint 'em. I've seen all 'a that I
wanta.  Don't tell me about comin' in behint--"

"Bill Smithers, he ses he'd rather been in ten hundred battles than
been in that heluva hospital.  He ses they got shootin' in th'
night-time, an' shells dropped plum among 'em in th' hospital.  He ses
sech hollerin' he never see."

"Hasbrouck?  He's th' best off'cer in this here reg'ment.  He's a
whale."

"Didn't I tell yeh we'd come aroun' in behint 'em?  Didn't I tell yeh
so?  We--"

"Oh, shet yeh mouth!"

For a time this pursuing recollection of the tattered man took all
elation from the youth's veins.  He saw his vivid error, and he was
afraid that it would stand before him all his life.  He took no share
in the chatter of his comrades, nor did he look at them or know them,
save when he felt sudden suspicion that they were seeing his thoughts
and scrutinizing each detail of the scene with the tattered soldier.

Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance.  And at
last his eyes seemed to open to some new ways.  He found that he could
look back upon the brass and bombast of his earlier gospels and see
them truly.  He was gleeful when he discovered that he now despised
them.

With this conviction came a store of assurance.  He felt a quiet
manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood.  He knew that he
would no more quail before his guides wherever they should point.  He
had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was
but the great death.  He was a man.

So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath
his soul changed. He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover
tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares were not.  Scars faded as
flowers.

It rained.  The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train,
despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of
liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky.  Yet the youth smiled, for
he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to
be made of oaths and walking sticks.  He had rid himself of the red
sickness of battle.  The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been
an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war.  He
turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh
meadows, cool brooks--an existence of soft and eternal peace.

Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden
rain clouds.





[Transcriber's Note: I have tried to retain the inconsistent renderings
of contractions as joined or separate, e.g., "we 'll" or "we'll."

I have made the following changes to the text:

PAGE  PARA.  LINE  ORIGINAL          CHANGED TO
  18     3      3  estabiish         establish
  40     3      2  skirmish          skirmish-
  78     4      4  a air             an air
 130            2  recognzied        recognized
 130     4     12  could a'          could 'a
 139     2      4  not began         not begun
 193     2     16  illusions to      allusions to]

 He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. The officers order a full-scale charge upon the fence, and the men comply with a final burst of energy. Bearing the flag as he runs through the smoke, Henry perceives dimly that many of the enemy soldiers are fleeing from the fence at the sight of the blue charge. Only a small, determined group remains. As the men battle, Henry sees that the enemy's standard bearer is wounded. Thinking that capturing the opponent's battle flag--that "craved treasure of mythology"--would be a supreme accomplishment, he rushes toward him. He and Wilson lunge for the flag at the same time, and Wilson succeeds in prying it from the dying enemy's fingers. At last the gray soldiers are driven from the fence, and Henry's regiment begins to celebrate. They have even taken four prisoners--one curses the regiment, one talks to them with interest, one stares stoically into space, and the last seems ashamed to have been captured. Henry nestles into a long patch of grass and rests contentedly, chatting with Wilson about their achievements. Chapter XXIV After a while, the regiment receives orders to march back toward the river. As Henry walks, he ponders his experience of war and reproaches himself for his early behavior. His mind undergoes a "subtle change" as he feels elated about his recent success in battle, but is tormented by his cowardice in the first battle and reprehensible abandonment of the tattered man. Milling over both his accomplishments and his failures, Henry is finally able to put his life into proper perspective, to "criticize with some correctness." At last, he is able to distance himself from the guilt that he feels about his initially selfish behavior. As a pouring rain begins to fall from the sky, Henry smiles, imagining a world of beauty, happiness, and eternal peace. He feels a "quiet manhood" within himself, and over the river a symbolic ray of sun breaks through the clouds.

