As he rounded a hillock, he perceived that the roadway was now a crying mass of , teams, and men. From the heaving issued , commands, imprecations. Fear was it all along. The cracking whips bit and horses and . The white-topped wagons strained and stumbled in their 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 .
Presently the calm head of a forward-going column of appeared in the road. It came swiftly on. Avoiding the gave it the movement of a serpent. The men at the head with their stocks. They teamsters indifferent to all howls. The men forced their way through parts of the mass by strength. The blunt head of the column pushed. The 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 . They were to confront the eager rush of the enemy. They felt the pride of their movement when the remainder of the army seemed trying to 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 .
As the youth looked at them the black weight of his 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 .
He searched about in his mind for an adequate 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 fighting. Heroes, he thought, could find excuses in that long 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 charges with one knee forward and a broken blade high--a blue, figure before a and steel assault, getting calmly killed on a high place before the eyes of all. He thought of the magnificent 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 of a rapid successful charge. The music of the 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 .
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 the dark, leering witch of .
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 .
Also, he continued, it would be a miracle if he found his . 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 , when the for a moment, a man to ask of him an explanation. In imagination he felt the of his companions as he painfully through some lies.
Eventually, his courage 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 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 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
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