Chapter: He became aware that the furnace roar of the battle was growing louder.
Great brown clouds had floated to the still heights of air before him.
The noise, too, was approaching.  The woods filtered men and the fields
became dotted.

As he rounded a hillock, he perceived that the roadway was now a crying
mass of wagons, teams, and men.  From the heaving tangle issued
exhortations, commands, imprecations.  Fear was sweeping it all along.
The cracking whips bit and horses plunged and tugged.  The white-topped
wagons strained and stumbled in their exertions like fat sheep.

The youth felt comforted in a measure by this sight.  They were all
retreating.  Perhaps, then, he was not so bad after all.  He seated
himself and watched the terror-stricken wagons.  They fled like soft,
ungainly animals.  All the roarers and lashers served to help him to
magnify the dangers and horrors of the engagement that he might try to
prove to himself that the thing with which men could charge him was in
truth a symmetrical act.  There was an amount of pleasure to him in
watching the wild march of this vindication.

Presently the calm head of a forward-going column of infantry appeared
in the road.  It came swiftly on.  Avoiding the obstructions gave it
the sinuous movement of a serpent.  The men at the head butted mules
with their musket stocks.  They prodded teamsters indifferent to all
howls.  The men forced their way through parts of the dense mass by
strength.  The blunt head of the column pushed.  The raving teamsters
swore many strange oaths.

The commands to make way had the ring of a great importance in them.
The men were going forward to the heart of the din.  They were to
confront the eager rush of the enemy.  They felt the pride of their
onward movement when the remainder of the army seemed trying to dribble
down this road.  They tumbled teams about with a fine feeling that it
was no matter so long as their column got to the front in time.  This
importance made their faces grave and stern. And the backs of the
officers were very rigid.

As the youth looked at them the black weight of his woe returned to
him.  He felt that he was regarding a procession of chosen beings.  The
separation was as great to him as if they had marched with weapons of
flame and banners of sunlight.  He could never be like them.  He could
have wept in his longings.

He searched about in his mind for an adequate malediction for the
indefinite cause, the thing upon which men turn the words of final
blame.  It--whatever it was--was responsible for him, he said.  There
lay the fault.

The haste of the column to reach the battle seemed to the forlorn young
man to be something much finer than stout fighting.  Heroes, he
thought, could find excuses in that long seething lane.  They could
retire with perfect self-respect and make excuses to the stars.

He wondered what those men had eaten that they could be in such haste
to force their way to grim chances of death.  As he watched his envy
grew until he thought that he wished to change lives with one of them.
He would have liked to have used a tremendous force, he said, throw off
himself and become a better.  Swift pictures of himself, apart, yet in
himself, came to him--a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges
with one knee forward and a broken blade high--a blue, determined
figure standing before a crimson and steel assault, getting calmly
killed on a high place before the eyes of all.  He thought of the
magnificent pathos of his dead body.

These thoughts uplifted him.  He felt the quiver of war desire.  In his
ears, he heard the ring of victory.  He knew the frenzy of a rapid
successful charge.  The music of the trampling feet, the sharp voices,
the clanking arms of the column near him made him soar on the red wings
of war.  For a few moments he was sublime.

He thought that he was about to start for the front.  Indeed, he saw a
picture of himself, dust-stained, haggard, panting, flying to the front
at the proper moment to seize and throttle the dark, leering witch of
calamity.

Then the difficulties of the thing began to drag at him.  He hesitated,
balancing awkwardly on one foot.

He had no rifle; he could not fight with his hands, said he resentfully
to his plan.  Well, rifles could be had for the picking.  They were
extraordinarily profuse.

Also, he continued, it would be a miracle if he found his regiment.
Well, he could fight with any regiment.

He started forward slowly.  He stepped as if he expected to tread upon
some explosive thing. Doubts and he were struggling.

He would truly be a worm if any of his comrades should see him
returning thus, the marks of his flight upon him.  There was a reply
that the intent fighters did not care for what happened rearward saving
that no hostile bayonets appeared there.  In the battle-blur his face
would, in a way be hidden, like the face of a cowled man.

But then he said that his tireless fate would bring forth, when the
strife lulled for a moment, a man to ask of him an explanation.  In
imagination he felt the scrutiny of his companions as he painfully
labored through some lies.

Eventually, his courage expended itself upon these objections.  The
debates drained him of his fire.

He was not cast down by this defeat of his plan, for, upon studying the
affair carefully, he could not but admit that the objections were very
formidable.

Furthermore, various ailments had begun to cry out.  In their presence
he could not persist in flying high with the wings of war; they
rendered it almost impossible for him to see himself in a heroic light.
He tumbled headlong.

He discovered that he had a scorching thirst. His face was so dry and
grimy that he thought he could feel his skin crackle.  Each bone of his
body had an ache in it, and seemingly threatened to break with each
movement.  His feet were like two sores.  Also, his body was calling
for food.  It was more powerful than a direct hunger. There was a dull,
weight like feeling in his stomach, and, when he tried to walk, his
head swayed and he tottered.  He could not see with distinctness. Small
patches of green mist floated before his vision.

While he had been tossed by many emotions, he had not been aware of
ailments.  Now they beset him and made clamor.  As he was at last
compelled to pay attention to them, his capacity for self-hate was
multiplied.  In despair, he declared that he was not like those others.
He now conceded it to be impossible that he should ever become a hero.
He was a craven loon. Those pictures of glory were piteous things.  He
groaned from his heart and went staggering off.

A certain mothlike quality within him kept him in the vicinity of the
battle.  He had a great desire to see, and to get news.  He wished to
know who was winning.

He told himself that, despite his unprecedented suffering, he had never
lost his greed for a victory, yet, he said, in a half-apologetic manner
to his conscience, he could not but know that a defeat for the army
this time might mean many favorable things for him.  The blows of the
enemy would splinter regiments into fragments.  Thus, many men of
courage, he considered, would be obliged to desert the colors and
scurry like chickens.  He would appear as one of them. They would be
sullen brothers in distress, and he could then easily believe he had
not run any farther or faster than they.  And if he himself could
believe in his virtuous perfection, he conceived that there would be
small trouble in convincing all others.

He said, as if in excuse for this hope, that previously the army had
encountered great defeats and in a few months had shaken off all blood
and tradition of them, emerging as bright and valiant as a new one;
thrusting out of sight the memory of disaster, and appearing with the
valor and confidence of unconquered legions. The shrilling voices of
the people at home would pipe dismally for a time, but various generals
were usually compelled to listen to these ditties. He of course felt no
compunctions for proposing a general as a sacrifice.  He could not tell
who the chosen for the barbs might be, so he could center no direct
sympathy upon him.  The people were afar and he did not conceive public
opinion to be accurate at long range.  It was quite probable they would
hit the wrong man who, after he had recovered from his amazement would
perhaps spend the rest of his days in writing replies to the songs of
his alleged failure.  It would be very unfortunate, no doubt, but in
this case a general was of no consequence to the youth.

In a defeat there would be a roundabout vindication of himself.  He
thought it would prove, in a manner, that he had fled early because of
his superior powers of perception.  A serious prophet upon predicting a
flood should be the first man to climb a tree.  This would demonstrate
that he was indeed a seer.

A moral vindication was regarded by the youth as a very important
thing.  Without salve, he could not, he thought, wear the sore badge of
his dishonor through life.  With his heart continually assuring him
that he was despicable, he could not exist without making it, through
his actions, apparent to all men.

If the army had gone gloriously on he would be lost.  If the din meant
that now his army's flags were tilted forward he was a condemned
wretch.  He would be compelled to doom himself to isolation.  If the
men were advancing, their indifferent feet were trampling upon his
chances for a successful life.

As these thoughts went rapidly through his mind, he turned upon them
and tried to thrust them away.  He denounced himself as a villain. He
said that he was the most unutterably selfish man in existence.  His
mind pictured the soldiers who would place their defiant bodies before
the spear of the yelling battle fiend, and as he saw their dripping
corpses on an imagined field, he said that he was their murderer.

Again he thought that he wished he was dead. He believed that he envied
a corpse.  Thinking of the slain, he achieved a great contempt for some
of them, as if they were guilty for thus becoming lifeless.  They might
have been killed by lucky chances, he said, before they had had
opportunities to flee or before they had been really tested.  Yet they
would receive laurels from tradition.  He cried out bitterly that their
crowns were stolen and their robes of glorious memories were shams.
However, he still said that it was a great pity he was not as they.

A defeat of the army had suggested itself to him as a means of escape
from the consequences of his fall.  He considered, now, however, that
it was useless to think of such a possibility.  His education had been
that success for that mighty blue machine was certain; that it would
make victories as a contrivance turns out buttons.  He presently
discarded all his speculations in the other direction.  He returned to
the creed of soldiers.

When he perceived again that it was not possible for the army to be
defeated, he tried to bethink him of a fine tale which he could take
back to his regiment, and with it turn the expected shafts of derision.

But, as he mortally feared these shafts, it became impossible for him
to invent a tale he felt he could trust.  He experimented with many
schemes, but threw them aside one by one as flimsy.  He was quick to
see vulnerable places in them all.

Furthermore, he was much afraid that some arrow of scorn might lay him
mentally low before he could raise his protecting tale.

He imagined the whole regiment saying: "Where's Henry Fleming?  He run,
didn't 'e? Oh, my!"  He recalled various persons who would be quite
sure to leave him no peace about it.  They would doubtless question him
with sneers, and laugh at his stammering hesitation.  In the next
engagement they would try to keep watch of him to discover when he
would run.

Wherever he went in camp, he would encounter insolent and lingeringly
cruel stares.  As he imagined himself passing near a crowd of comrades,
he could hear some one say, "There he goes!"

Then, as if the heads were moved by one muscle, all the faces were
turned toward him with wide, derisive grins.  He seemed to hear some
one make a humorous remark in a low tone. At it the others all crowed
and cackled.  He was a slang phrase.

 Henry continues across the field. He rounds a hill and encounters a running mass of wagons, horses, and men. He is momentarily relieved. Everyone is retreating; perhaps his own retreat is not so bad after all. A column of troops comes up in the road, heading in the opposite direction. They push themselves through the fleeing wagons towards the enemy. These men bring Henry's feelings of inadequacy back. He feels that these are chosen beings, marching in the sunlight. He could never be like these men. He feels that the final blame for his condition lies on some unnamable thing. He wonders why these men would be in such a hurry to get to the battle. Henry grows more envious. He wishes a tremendous force would throw him off, leaving a better person. He can see pictures of this more fleet and heroic soldier he would make. He feels the desire to fight again. However, he has no rifle. He knows that he could get one if he needed to, and fight with any regiment, but he feels guilty about returning to his own now. He imagines himself concocting lies to face the questions of his mates. These thoughts squash his courage. He suddenly is consumed by thirst, feels dirty, and realizes he is full of aches and pains. Small patches of green mist float in front of his eyes. He feels it impossible for him to be a hero. Of course, he has not lost his greed for a victory and believes the army's loss would be good for him. His mates would look at his absence less suspiciously. His thoughts go to the army as a whole and its future failures and then valorous deeds. Public opinion, he decides, cannot be accurate at a long range. Generals must deal with the agony of these opinions, much like he would deal with the opinions of his fellow troops. If the army did well, he would be lost. He would be a condemned man. Henry's thoughts make him frustrated. He calls himself a villain and selfish. He again wishes he were dead. He envies the corpses, killed by luck. They would receive the laurels of tradition. Besides, the army was not likely to be defeated. He knows he needs to think of good excuses, yet he cannot invent a plausible tale. He pictures the whole regiment talking about him derisively, and laughing and staring at him. He would be turned into a "slang phrase

