THE youth stared at the land in front of him.
Its foliages now seemed to veil powers and hor-rors.He was unaware of the machinery of orders that started the charge, although from the cor-ners of his eyes he saw an officer, who looked like a boy a-horseback, come galloping, waving his hat.Suddenly he felt a straining and heaving among the men.The line fell slowly forward like a toppling wall, and, with a convulsive gasp that was intended for a cheer, the regiment began its journey.The youth was pushed and jostled for a moment before he understood the move-ment at all, but directly he lunged ahead and began to run.
He fixed his eye upon a distant and promi-nent clump of trees where he had concluded the enemy were to be met, and he ran toward it as toward a goal.He had believed throughout that it was a mere question of getting over an unpleas-ant matter as quickly as possible, and he ran 179desperately, as if pursued for a murder.His face was drawn hard and tight with the stress of his endeavor.His eyes were fixed in a lurid glare.And with his soiled and disordered dress, his red and inflamed features surmounted by the dingy rag with its spot of blood, his wildly swinging rifle and banging accouterments, he looked to be an insane soldier.
As the regiment swung from its position out into a cleared space the woods and thickets be-fore it awakened.Yellow flames leaped toward it from many directions.The forest made a tre-mendous objection.
The line lurched straight for a moment.Then the right wing swung forward; it in turn was surpassed by the left.Afterward the center careered to the front until the regiment was a wedge-shaped mass, but an instant later the opposition of the bushes, trees, and uneven places on the ground split the command and scattered it into detached clusters.
The youth, light-footed, was unconsciously in advance.His eyes still kept note of the clump of trees.From all places near it the clannish yell of the enemy could be heard.The little flames of rifles leaped from it.The song of the bullets was in the air and shells snarled among the tree-tops.One tumbled directly into the middle of a hurrying group and exploded in crimson fury.
There was an instant's spectacle of a man, almost over it, throwing up his hands to shield his eyes.
Other men, punched by bullets, fell in gro-tesque agonies.The regiment left a coherent trail of bodies.
They had passed into a clearer atmosphere.
There was an effect like a revelation in the new appearance of the landscape.Some men work-ing madly at a battery were plain to them, and the opposing infantry's lines were defined by the gray walls and fringes of smoke.
It seemed to the youth that he saw every-thing.Each blade of the green grass was bold and clear.He thought that he was aware of every change in the thin, transparent vapor that floated idly in sheets.The brown or gray trunks of the trees showed each roughness of their sur-faces.And the men of the regiment, with their starting eyes and sweating faces, running madly, or falling, as if thrown headlong, to queer, heaped-up corpses--all were comprehended.His mind took a mechanical but firm impression, so that afterward everything was pictured and ex-plained to him, save why he himself was there.
But there was a frenzy made from this furious rush.The men, pitching forward insanely, had burst into cheerings, moblike and barbaric, but tuned in strange keys that can arouse the dullard and the stoic.It made a mad enthusiasm that, it seemed, would be incapable of checking itself before granite and brass.There was the deli-rium that encounters despair and death, and is heedless and blind to the odds.It is a temporary but sublime absence of selfishness.And because it was of this order was the reason, perhaps, why the youth wondered, afterward, what reasons he could have had for being there.
Presently the straining pace ate up the ener-gies of the men.As if by agreement, the leaders began to slacken their speed.The volleys di-rected against them had had a seeming windlike effect.The regiment snorted and blew.Among some stolid trees it began to falter and hesitate.
The men, staring intently, began to wait for some of the distant walls of smoke to move and dis-close to them the scene.Since much of their strength and their breath had vanished, they re-turned to caution.They were become men again.
The youth had a vague belief that he had run miles, and he thought, in a way, that he was now in some new and unknown land.
The moment the regiment ceased its advance the protesting splutter of musketry became a steadied roar.Long and accurate fringes of smoke spread out.From the top of a small hill came level belchings of yellow flame that caused an inhuman whistling in the air.
The men, halted, had opportunity to see some of their comrades dropping with moans and shrieks.A few lay under foot, still or wailing.
And now for an instant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands, and watched the regiment dwindle.They appeared dazed and stupid.This spectacle seemed to paralyze them, overcome them with a fatal fascination.They stared wood-enly at the sights, and, lowering their eyes, looked from face to face.It was a strange pause, and a strange silence.
Then, above the sounds of the outside commo-tion, arose the roar of the lieutenant.He strode suddenly forth, his infantile features black with rage.
