The dark uniforms of the men were so coated with dust from the
incessant wrestling of the two armies that the regiment almost seemed a
part of the clay bank which shielded them from the shells. On the top of
the hill a battery was arguing in tremendous roars with some other guns,
and to the eye of the infantry, the artillerymen, the guns, the
caissons, the horses, were distinctly outlined upon the blue sky. When a
piece was fired, a red streak as round as a log flashed low in the
heavens, like a monstrous bolt of lightning. The men of the battery wore
white duck trousers, which somehow emphasised their legs: and when they
ran and crowded in little groups at the bidding of the shouting
Fred Collins, of A Company, was saying: "Thunder, I wisht I had a
drink. Ain't there any water round here?" Then, somebody yelled: "There
goes th' bugler!"
As the eyes of half the regiment swept in one machine-like movement,
there was an instant's picture of a horse in a great convulsive leap of
a death-wound and a rider leaning back with a crooked arm and spread
fingers before his face. On the ground was the crimson terror of an
exploding shell, with fibres of flame that seemed like lances. A
glittering bugle swung clear of the rider's back as fell headlong the
horse and the man. In the air was an odour as from a conflagration.
Sometimes they of the infantry looked down at a fair little meadow
which spread at their feet. Its long, green grass was rippling gently in
a breeze. Beyond it was the grey form of a house half torn to pieces by
shells and by the busy axes of soldiers who had pursued firewood. The
line of an old fence was now dimly marked by long weeds and by an
occasional post. A shell had blown the well-house to fragments. Little
lines of grey smoke ribboning upward from some embers indicated the
place where had stood the barn.
From beyond a curtain of green woods there came the sound of some
stupendous scuffle, as if two animals of the size of islands were
fighting. At a distance there were occasional appearances of swift-
moving men, horses, batteries, flags, and, with the crashing of infantry
volleys were heard, often, wild and frenzied cheers. In the midst of it
all Smith and Ferguson, two privates of A Company, were engaged in a
heated discussion, which involved the greatest questions of the national
existence.
The battery on the hill presently engaged in a frightful duel. The
white legs of the gunners scampered this way and that way, and the
officers redoubled their shouts. The guns, with their demeanours of
stolidity and courage, were typical of something infinitely self-
possessed in this clamour of death that swirled around the hill.
One of a "swing" team was suddenly smitten quivering to the ground, and
his maddened brethren dragged his torn body in their struggle to escape
from this turmoil and danger. A young soldier astride one of the leaders
swore and fumed in his saddle, and furiously jerked at the bridle. An
officer screamed out an order so violently that his voice broke and
ended the sentence in a falsetto shriek.
The leading company of the infantry regiment was somewhat exposed, and
the colonel ordered it moved more fully under the shelter of the hill.
There was the clank of steel against steel.
A lieutenant of the battery rode down and passed them, holding his
right arm carefully in his left hand. And it was as if this arm was not
at all a part of him, but belonged to another man. His sober and
reflective charger went slowly. The officer's face was grimy and
perspiring, and his uniform was tousled as if he had been in direct
grapple with an enemy. He smiled grimly when the men stared at him. He
turned his horse toward the meadow.
Collins, of A Company, said: "I wisht I had a drink. I bet there's
water in that there ol' well yonder!"
"Yes; but how you goin' to git it?"
For the little meadow which intervened was now suffering a terrible
onslaught of shells. Its green and beautiful calm had vanished utterly.
Brown earth was being flung in monstrous handfuls. And there was a
massacre of the young blades of grass. They were being torn, burned,
obliterated. Some curious fortune of the battle had made this gentle
little meadow the object of the red hate of the shells, and each one as
it exploded seemed like an imprecation in the face of a maiden.
The wounded officer who was riding across this expanse said to himself:
"Why, they couldn't shoot any harder if the whole army was massed here!"
A shell struck the grey ruins of the house, and as, after the roar, the
shattered wall fell in fragments, there was a noise which resembled the
flapping of shutters during a wild gale of winter. Indeed, the infantry
paused in the shelter of the bank appeared as men standing upon a shore
contemplating a madness of the sea. The angel of calamity had under its
glance the battery upon the hill. Fewer white-legged men laboured about
the guns. A shell had smitten one of the pieces, and after the flare,
the smoke, the dust, the wrath of this blow were gone, it was possible
to see white lugs stretched horizontally upon the ground. And at that
interval to the rear, where it is the business of battery horses to
stand with their noses to the fight awaiting the command to drag their
guns out of the destruction, or into it, or wheresoever these
incomprehensible humans demanded with whip and spur--in this line of
passive and dumb spectators, whose fluttering hearts yet would not let
them forget the iron laws of man's control of them--in this rank of
brute-soldiers there had been relentless and hideous carnage. From the
ruck of bleeding and prostrate horses, the men of the infantry could see
one animal raising its stricken body with its fore legs, and turning its
nose with mystic and profound eloquence toward the sky.
Some comrades joked Collins about his thirst. "Well, if yeh want a
drink so bad, why don't yeh go git it?"
"Well, I will in a minnet, if yeh don't shut up!"
A lieutenant of artillery floundered his horse straight down the hill
with as little concern as if it were level ground. As he galloped past
the colonel of the infantry, he threw up his hand in swift salute.
"We've got to get out of that," he roared angrily. He was a black-
bearded officer, and his eyes, which resembled beads, sparkled like
those of an insane man. His jumping horse sped along the column of
infantry.
The fat major, standing carelessly with his sword held horizontally
behind him and with his legs far apart, looked after the receding
horseman and laughed. "He wants to get back with orders pretty quick, or
there'll be no batt'ry left," he observed.
The wise young captain of the second company hazarded to the lieutenant-
colonel that the enemy's infantry would probably soon attack the hill,
and the lieutenant-colonel snubbed him.
A private in one of the rear companies looked out over the meadow, and
then turned to a companion and said, "Look there, Jim!" It was the
wounded officer from the battery, who some time before had started to
ride across the meadow, supporting his right arm carefully with his left
hand. This man had encountered a shell apparently at a time when no one
perceived him, and he could now be seen lying face downward with a
stirruped foot stretched across the body of his dead horse. A leg of the
charger extended slantingly upward precisely as stiff as a stake. Around
this motionless pair the shells still howled.
There was a quarrel in A Company. Collins was shaking his fist in the
faces of some laughing comrades. "Dern yeh! I ain't afraid t' go. If yeh
say much, I will go!"
"Of course, yeh will! You'll run through that there medder, won't yeh?"
Collins said, in a terrible voice: "You see now!" At this ominous
threat his comrades broke into renewed jeers.
Collins gave them a dark scowl, and went to find his captain. The
latter was conversing with the colonel of the regiment.
"Captain," said Collins, saluting and standing at attention--in those
days all trousers bagged at the knees--"Captain, I wan't t' get
permission to go git some water from that there well over yonder!"
The colonel and the captain swung about simultaneously and stared
across the meadow. The captain laughed. "You must be pretty thirsty,
Collins?"
"Yes, sir, I am."
"Well--ah," said the captain. After a moment, he asked, "Can't you wait?"
"No, sir."
The colonel was watching Collins's face. "Look here, my lad," he said,
in a pious sort of a voice--"Look here, my lad"--Collins was not a lad--
"don't you think that's taking pretty big risks for a little drink of
water."
"I dunno," said Collins uncomfortably. Some of the resentment toward
his companions, which perhaps had forced him into this affair, was
beginning to fade. "I dunno wether 'tis."
The colonel and the captain contemplated him for a time.
"Well," said the captain finally.
"Well," said the colonel, "if you want to go, why, go."
Collins saluted. "Much obliged t' yeh."
As he moved away the colonel called after him. "Take some of the other
boys' canteens with you an' hurry back now."
"Yes, sir, I will."
The colonel and the captain looked at each other then, for it had
suddenly occurred that they could not for the life of them tell whether
Collins wanted to go or whether he did not.
They turned to regard Collins, and as they perceived him surrounded by
gesticulating comrades, the colonel said: "Well, by thunder! I guess
he's going."
Collins appeared as a man dreaming. In the midst of the questions, the
advice, the warnings, all the excited talk of his company mates, he
maintained a curious silence.
They were very busy in preparing him for his ordeal. When they
inspected him carefully, it was somewhat like the examination that
grooms give a horse before a race; and they were amazed, staggered by
the whole affair. Their astonishment found vent in strange repetitions.
"Are yeh sure a-goin'?" they demanded again and again.
"Certainly I am," cried Collins at last furiously.
He strode sullenly away from them. He was swinging five or six canteens
by their cords. It seemed that his cap would not remain firmly on his
head, and often he reached and pulled it down over his brow.
There was a general movement in the compact column. The long animal-like
thing moved slightly. Its four hundred eyes were turned upon the figure
of Collins.
"Well, sir, if that ain't th' derndest thing! I never thought Fred
Collins had the blood in him for that kind of business."
"What's he goin' to do, anyhow?"
"He's goin' to that well there after water."
"We ain't dyin' of thirst, are we? That's foolishness."
"Well, somebody put him up to it, an' he's doin' it."
"Say, he must be a desperate cuss."
When Collins faced the meadow and walked away from the regiment, he was
vaguely conscious that a chasm, the deep valley of all prides, was
suddenly between him and his comrades. It was provisional, but the
provision was that he return as a victor. He had blindly been led by
quaint emotions, and laid himself under an obligation to walk squarely
up to the face of death.
But he was not sure that he wished to make a retraction, even if he
could do so without shame. As a matter of truth, he was sure of very
little. He was mainly surprised.
It seemed to him supernaturally strange that he had allowed his mind to
manoeuvre his body into such a situation. He understood that it might be
called dramatically great.
However, he had no full appreciation of anything, excepting that he was
actually conscious of being dazed. He could feel his dulled mid groping
after the form and colour of this incident. He wondered why he did not
feel some keen agony of fear cutting his sense like a knife. He wondered
at this, because human expression had said loudly for centuries that men
should feel afraid of certain things, and that all men who did not feel
this fear were phenomena--heroes.
He was, then, a hero. He suffered that disappointment which we would
all have if we discovered that we were ourselves capable of those deeds
which we most admire in history and legend. This, then, was a hero.
After all, heroes were not much.
No, it could not be true. He was not a hero. Heroes had no shames in
their lives, and, as for him, he remembered borrowing fifteen dollars
from a friend and promising to pay it back the next day, and then
avoiding that friend for ten months. When at home his mother had aroused
him for the early labour of his life on the farm, it had often been his
fashion to be irritable, childish, diabolical; and his mother had died
since he had come to the war.
He saw that, in this matter of the well, the canteens, the shells, he
was an intruder in the land of fine deeds.
He was now about thirty paces from his comrades. The regiment had just
turned its many faces toward him.
From the forest of terrific noises there suddenly emerged a little
uneven line of men. They fired fiercely and rapidly at distant foliage
on which appeared little puffs of white smoke. The spatter of skirmish
firing was added to the thunder of the guns on the hill. The little line
of men ran forward. A colour-sergeant fell flat with his flag as if he
had slipped on ice. There was hoarse cheering from this distant field.
Collins suddenly felt that two demon fingers were pressed into his
ears. He could see nothing but flying arrows, flaming red. He lurched
from the shock of this explosion, but he made a mad rush for the house,
which he viewed as a man submerged to the neck in a boiling surf might
view the shore. In the air, little pieces of shell howled and the
earthquake explosions drove him insane with the menace of their roar. As
he ran the canteens knocked together with a rhythmical tinkling.
As he neared the house, each detail of the scene became vivid to him.
He was aware of some bricks of the vanished chimney lying on the sod.
There was a door which hung by one hinge.
Rifle bullets called forth by the insistent skirmishers came from the
far-off bank of foliage. They mingled with the shells and the pieces of
shells until the air was torn in all directions by hootings, yells,
howls. The sky was full of fiends who directed all their wild rage at
his head.
When he came to the well, he flung himself face downward and peered
into its darkness. There were furtive silver glintings some feet from
the surface. He grabbed one of the canteens, and, unfastening its cap,
swung it down by the cord. The water flowed slowly in with an indolent
gurgle.
And now as he lay with his face turned away he was suddenly smitten
with the terror. It came upon his heart like the grasp of claws. All the
power faded from his muscles. For an instant he was no more than a dead
man.
The canteen filled with a maddening slowness, in the manner of all
bottles. Presently he recovered his strength and addressed a screaming
oath to it. He leaned over until it seemed as if he intended to try to
push water into it with his hands. His eyes as he gazed down into the
well shone like two pieces of metal, and in their expression was a great
appeal and a great curse. The stupid water derided him.
There was the blaring thunder of a shell. Crimson light shone through
the swift-boiling smoke, and made a pink reflection on part of the wall
of the well. Collins jerked out his arm and canteen with the same motion
that a man would use in withdrawing his head from a furnace.
He scrambled erect and glared and hesitated. On the ground near him lay
the old well bucket, with a length of rusty chain. He lowered it swiftly
into the well. The bucket struck the water and then, turning lazily
over, sank. When, with hand reaching tremblingly over hand, he hauled it
out, it knocked often against the walls of the well and spilled some of
its contents.
In running with a filled bucket, a man can adopt but one kind of gait.
So through this terrible field, over which screamed practical angels of
death, Collins ran in the manner of a farmer chased out of a dairy by a
bull.
His face went staring white with anticipation--anticipation of a blow
that would whirl him around and down. He would fall as he had seen other
men fall, the life knocked out of them so suddenly that their knees were
no more quick to touch the ground than their heads. He saw the long blue
line of the regiment, but his comrades were standing looking at him from
the edge of an impossible star. He was aware of some deep wheel-ruts and
hoof-prints in the sod beneath his feet.
The artillery officer who had fallen in this meadow had been making
groans in the teeth of the tempest of sound. These futile cries,
wrenched from him by his agony, were heard only by shells, bullets. When
wild-eyed Collins came running, this officer raised himself. His face
contorted and blanched from pain, he was about to utter some great
beseeching cry. But suddenly his face straightened and he called:
"Say, young man, give me a drink of water, will you?"
Collins had no room amid his emotions for surprise. He was mad from the
threats of destruction.
"I can't!" he screamed, and in his reply was a full description of his
quaking apprehension. His cap was gone and his hair was riotous. His
clothes made it appear that he had been dragged over the ground by the
heels. He ran on.
The officer's head sank down, and one elbow crooked. His foot in its
brass-bound stirrup still stretched over the body of his horse, and the
other leg was under the steed.
But Collins turned. He came dashing back. His face had now turned grey,
and in his eyes was all terror. "Here it is! here it is!"
The officer was as a man gone in drink. His arm bent like a twig. His
head drooped as if his neck were of willow. He was sinking to the
ground, to lie face downward.
Collins grabbed him by the shoulder. "Here it is. Here's your drink.
Turn over. Turn over, man, for God's sake!"
With Collins hauling at his shoulder, the officer twisted his body and
fell with his face turned toward that region where lived the unspeakable
noises of the swirling missiles. There was the faintest shadow of a
smile on his lips as he looked at Collins. He gave a sigh, a little
primitive breath like that from a child.
Collins tried to hold the bucket steadily, but his shaking hands caused
the water to splash all over the face of the dying man. Then he jerked
it away and ran on.
The regiment gave him a welcoming roar. The grimed faces were wrinkled
in laughter.
His captain waved the bucket away. "Give it to the men!"
The two genial, skylarking young lieutenants were the first to gain
possession of it. They played over it in their fashion.
When one tried to drink the other teasingly knocked his elbow. "Don't,
Billie! You'll make me spill it," said the one. The other laughed.
Suddenly there was an oath, the thud of wood on the ground, and a swift
murmur of astonishment among the ranks. The two lieutenants glared at
each other. The bucket lay on the ground empty.
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