第14章

Many of the men were making low-toned noises with their mouths, and these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, bar-baric song that went as an undercurrent of sound, strange and chantlike with the resounding chords of the war march.The man at the youth's elbow was babbling.In it there was something soft and tender like the monologue of a babe.The tall soldier was swearing in a loud voice.From his lips came a black procession of curious oaths.Of a sudden another broke out in a querulous way like a man who has mislaid his hat."Well, why don't they support us? Why don't they send supports? Do they think--"The youth in his battle sleep heard this as one who dozes hears.

There was a singular absence of heroic poses.

The men bending and surging in their haste and rage were in every impossible attitude.The steel ramrods clanked and clanged with incessant din as the men pounded them furiously into the hot rifle barrels.The flaps of the cartridge boxes were all unfastened, and bobbed idiotically with each movement.The rifles, once loaded, were jerked to the shoulder and fired without apparent aim into the smoke or at one of the blurred and shift-ing forms which upon the field before the regi-ment had been growing larger and larger like puppets under a magician's hand.

The officers, at their intervals, rearward, neg-lected to stand in picturesque attitudes.They were bobbing to and fro roaring directions and encouragements.The dimensions of their howls were extraordinary.They expended their lungs with prodigal wills.And often they nearly stood upon their heads in their anxiety to observe the enemy on the other side of the tumbling smoke.

The lieutenant of the youth's company had en-countered a soldier who had fled screaming at the first volley of his comrades.Behind the lines these two were acting a little isolated scene.The man was blubbering and staring with sheeplike eyes at the lieutenant, who had seized him by the collar and was pommeling him.He drove him back into the ranks with many blows.The sol-dier went mechanically, dully, with his animal-like eyes upon the officer.Perhaps there was to him a divinity expressed in the voice of the other --stern, hard, with no reflection of fear in it.He tried to reload his gun, but his shaking hands pre-vented.The lieutenant was obliged to assist him.

The men dropped here and there like bundles.

The captain of the youth's company had been killed in an early part of the action.His body lay stretched out in the position of a tired man resting, but upon his face there was an astonished and sorrowful look, as if he thought some friend had done him an ill turn.The babbling man was grazed by a shot that made the blood stream widely down his face.He clapped both hands to his head."Oh!" he said, and ran.Another grunted suddenly as if he had been struck by a club in the stomach.He sat down and gazed ruefully.In his eyes there was mute, indefinite reproach.Farther up the line a man, standing behind a tree, had had his knee joint splintered by a ball.Immediately he had dropped his rifle and gripped the tree with both arms.And there he remained, clinging desperately and crying for assistance that he might withdraw his hold upon the tree.