and lay in the long grass behind. The time was come.
"FORWARD!"
Crittenden never knew before the thrill that blast sent through him, and
never in his life did he know it again.
It was the call of America to the American, white and black: and race
and colour forgotten, the American answered with the grit of the Saxon,
the Celt's pure love of a fight, and all the dash of the passionate
Gaul.
As Crittenden leaped to his feet, he saw Reynolds leap, too, and then
there was a hissing hell of white smoke and crackling iron at his
feet--and Reynolds disappeared.
It was a marvel afterward but, at that moment, Crittenden hardly noted
that the poor fellow was blown into a hundred fragments. He was in the
front line now. A Brigadier, with his hat in his hand and his white hair
shining in the sun, run diagonally across in front of his line of
battle, and, with a wild cheer, the run of death began.
God, how the bullets hissed and the shells shrieked; and, God, how
slow--slow--slow was the run! Crittenden's legs were of lead, and
leaden were the legs of the men with him--running with guns trailing the
earth or caught tightly across the breast and creeping unconsciously. He
saw nothing but the men in front of him, the men who were dropping
behind him, and the yellow line above, and the haven at the bottom of
the hill. Now and then he could see a little, dirty, blue figure leap
into view on the hill and disappear. Two men only were ahead of him when
he reached the foot of the hill--Sharpe and a tall Cuban close at his
side with machéte drawn--the one Cuban hero of that fierce charge. But
he could hear laboured panting behind him, and he knew that others were
coming on. God, how steep and high that hill was! He was gasping for
breath now, and he was side by side with Cuban and Lieutenant--gasping,
too. To right and left--faint cheers. To the right, a machine gun
playing like hail on the yellow dirt. To his left a shell, bursting in
front of a climbing, struggling group, and the soldiers tumbling
backward and rolling ten feet down the hill. A lull in the firing--the
Spaniards were running--and then the top--the top! Sharpe sprang over
the trench, calling out to save the wounded. A crouching Spaniard raised
his pistol, and Sharpe fell. With one leap, Crittenden reached him with
the butt of his gun and, with savage exultation, he heard the skull of
the Spaniard crash.
* * * * *
Straight in front, the Spaniards were running like rabbits through the
brush. To the left, Kent was charging far around and out of sight. To
the right, Rough Riders and negroes were driving Spaniards down one hill
and up the next. The negroes were as wild as at a camp meeting or a
voodoo dance. One big Sergeant strode along brandishing in each hand a
piece of his carbine that had been shot in two by a Mauser bullet, and
shouting at the top of his voice, contemptuously:
"Heah, somebody, gimme a gun! gimme a gun, I tell ye," still striding
ahead and looking never behind him. "You don't know how to fight. Gimme
a gun!" To the negro's left, a young Lieutenant was going up the hill
with naked sword in one hand and a kodak in the other--taking pictures
as he ran. A bare-headed boy, running between him and a gigantic negro
trooper, toppled suddenly and fell, and another negro stopped in the
charge, and, with a groan, bent over him and went no farther.
And all the time that machine gun was playing on the trenches like a
hard rain in summer dust. Whenever a Spaniard would leap from the
trench, he fell headlong. That pitiless fire kept in the trenches the
Spaniards who were found there--wretched, pathetic, half-starved little
creatures--and some terrible deeds were done in the lust of slaughter.
One gaunt fellow thrust a clasp-knife into the buttock of a shamming
Spaniard, and, when he sprang to his feet, blew the back of his head
off. Some of the Riders chased the enemy over the hill and lay down in
the shade. One of them pulled out of a dead Spaniard's pocket
cigarettes, cigars, and a lady's slipper of white satin; with a grunt he
put the slipper back. Below the trenches, two boyish prisoners sat under
a tree, crying as though they were broken-hearted, and a big trooper
walked up and patted them both kindly on the head.
"Don't cry, boys; it's all right--all right," he said, helplessly.
* * * * *
Over at the block-house, Crittenden stopped firing suddenly, and,
turning to his men, shouted:
"Get back over the hill boys, they're going to start in again." As they
ran back, a Lieutenant-Colonel met them.
"Are you in command?"
Crittenden saluted.
"No, sir," he said.
"Yes, sir," said the old Sergeant at his side. "He was. He brought these
men up the hill."
"The hell he did. Where are your officers?"
The old Sergeant motioned toward the valley below, and Crittenden opened
his lips to explain, but just then the sudden impression came to him
that some one had struck him from behind with the butt of a musket, and
he tried to wheel around--his face amazed and wondering. Then he
dropped. He wondered, too, why he couldn't get around, and then he
wondered how it was that he happened to be falling to the earth.
Darkness came then, and through it ran one bitter thought--he had been
shot in the back. He did think of his mother and of Judith--but it was a
fleeting vision of both, and his main thought was a dull wonder whether
there would be anybody to explain how it was that his wound was not in
front. And then, as he felt himself lifted, it flashed that he would at
least be found on top of the hill, and beyond the Spaniard's trench, and
he saw Blackford's face above him. Then he was dropped heavily to the
ground again and Blackford pitched across his body. There was one
glimpse of Abe Long's anxious face above him, another vision of Judith,
and then quiet, painless darkness.
* * * * *
It was fiercer firing now than ever. The Spaniards were in the second
line of trenches and were making a sortie. Under the hill sat Grafton
and another correspondent while the storm of bullets swept over them.
Grafton was without glasses--a Mauser had furrowed the skin on the
bridge of his nose, breaking his spectacle-frame so that one glass
dropped on one side of his nose and the other on the other. The other
man had several narrow squeaks, as he called them, and, even as they
sat, a bullet cut a leaf over his head and it dropped between the pages
of his note-book. He closed the book and looked up.
"Thanks," he said. "That's just what I want--I'll keep that."
"I observe," said Grafton, "that the way one of these infernal bullets
sounds depends entirely on where you happen to be when you hear it. When
a sharpshooter has picked you out and is plugging at you, they are
intelligent and vindictive. Coming through that bottom, they were for
all the world like a lot of nasty little insects. And listen to 'em
now." The other man listened. "Hear 'em as they pass over and go out of
hearing. That is for all the world like the last long note of a meadow
lark's song when you hear him afar off and at sunset. But I notice that
simile didn't occur to me until I got under the lee of this hill." He
looked around. "This hill will be famous, I suppose. Let's go up
higher." They went up higher, passing a crowd of skulkers, or men in
reserve--Grafton could not tell which--and as they went by a soldier
said:
"Well, if I didn't have to be here, I be damned if I wouldn't like to
see anybody get me here. What them fellers come fer, I can't see."
The firing was still hot when the two men got up to the danger line, and
there they lay down. A wounded man lay at Grafton's elbow. Once his
throat rattled and Grafton turned curiously.
"That's the death-rattle," he said to himself, and he had never heard a
death-rattle before. The poor fellow's throat rattled again, and again
Grafton turned.
"I never knew before," he said to himself, "that a dying man's throat
rattled but once." Then it flashed on him with horror that he should
have so little feeling, and he knew it at once as the curious
callousness that comes quickly to toughen the heart for the sights of
war. A man killed in battle was not an ordinary dead man at all--he
stirred no sensation at all--no more than a dead animal. Already he had
heard officers remarking calmly to one another, and apparently without
feeling:
"Well, So and So was killed to-day." And he looked back to the
disembarkation, when the army was simply in a hurry. Two negro troopers
were drowned trying to get off on the little pier. They were fished up;
a rope was tied about the neck of each, and they were lashed to the pier
and left to be beaten against the wooden pillars by the waves for four
hours before four comrades came and took them out and buried them. Such
was the dreadful callousness that sweeps through the human heart when
war begins, and he was under its influence himself, and long afterward
he remembered with shame his idle and half-scientific and useless
curiosity about the wounded man at his elbow. As he turned his head, the
soldier gave a long, deep, peaceful sigh, as though he had gone to
sleep. With pity now Grafton turned to him--and he had gone to sleep,
but it was his last sleep.
"Look," said the other man. Grafton looked upward. Along the trenches,
and under a hot fire, moved little Jerry Carter, with figure bent, hands
clasped behind him--with the manner, for all the world, of a deacon in a
country graveyard looking for inscriptions on tombstones.
Now and then a bullet would have a hoarse sound--that meant that it had
ricochetted. At intervals of three or four minutes a huge, old-fashioned
projectile would labour through the air, visible all the time, and crash
harmlessly into the woods. The Americans called it the "long yellow
feller," and sometimes a negro trooper would turn and with a yell shoot
at it as it passed over. A little way off, a squad of the Tenth Cavalry
was digging a trench--close to the top of the hill. Now and then one
would duck--particularly the one on the end. He had his tongue in the
corner of his mouth, was twirling his pick over his shoulder like a
railroad hand, and grunting with every stroke. Grafton could hear him.
"Foh Gawd (huh!) never thought (huh!) I'd git to love (huh!) a pick
befoh!" Grafton broke into a laugh.
"You see the charge?"
"Part of it."
"That tall fellow with the blue handkerchief around his throat,
bare-headed, long hair?"
"Well--" the other man stopped for a moment. His eye had caught sight of
a figure on the ground--on the top of the trench, and with the profile
of his face between him and the afterglow, and his tone changed--"there
he is!"
Grafton pressed closer. "What, that the fellow?" There was the
handkerchief, the head was bare, the hair long and dark. The man's eyes
were closed, but he was breathing. Below them at that moment they heard
the surgeon say:
"Up there." And two hospital men, with a litter, came toward them and
took up the body. As they passed, Grafton recoiled.
"Good God!" It was Crittenden.
And, sitting on the edge of the trench, with Sharpe lying with his face
on his arm a few feet away, and the tall Cuban outstretched beside him,
and the dead Spaniards, Americans, and Cubans about them, Grafton told
the story of Crittenden. And at the end the other man gave a low whistle
and smote the back of one hand into the palm of the other softly.
Dusk fell quickly. The full moon rose. The stars came out, and under
them, at the foot of the big mountains, a red fire burned sharply out in
the mist rising over captured Caney, from which tireless Chaffee was
already starting his worn-out soldiers on an all-night march by the rear
and to the trenches at San Juan. And along the stormed hill-side
camp-fires were glowing out where the lucky soldiers who had rations to
cook were cheerily frying bacon and hardtack. Grafton moved down to
watch one squad and, as he stood on the edge of the firelight, wondering
at the cheery talk and joking laughter, somebody behind him said
sharply:
"Watch out, there," and he turned to find himself on the edge of a grave
which a detail was digging not ten yards away from the fire--digging for
a dead comrade. Never had he seen a more peaceful moonlit night than the
night that closed over the battlefield. It was hard for him to realize
that the day had not been a terrible dream, and yet, as the moon rose,
its rich light, he knew, was stealing into the guerilla-haunted jungles,
stealing through guava-bush and mango-tree, down through clumps of
Spanish bayonet, on stiff figures that would rise no more; on white, set
faces with the peace of painless death upon them or the agony of silent
torture, fought out under fierce heat and in the silence of the jungle
alone.
Looking toward Caney he could even see the hill from which he had
witnessed the flight of the first shell that had been the storm centre
of the hurricane of death that had swept all through the white,
cloudless day. It burst harmlessly--that shell--and meant no more than a
signal to fire to the soldiers closing in on Caney, the Cubans lurking
around a block-house at a safe artillery distance in the woods and to
the impatient battery before San Juan. Retrospectively now, it meant the
death-knell of brave men, the quick cry and long groaning of the
wounded, the pained breathing of sick and fever-stricken, the quickened
heart-beats of the waiting and anxious at home--the low sobbing of the
women to whom fatal news came. It meant Cervera's gallant dash, Sampson
and Schley's great victory, the fall of Santiago; freedom for Cuba, a
quieter sleep for the _Maine_ dead, and peace with Spain. Once more, as
he rose, he looked at the dark woods, the dead-haunted jungles which the
moon was draping with a more than mortal beauty, and he knew that in
them, as in the long grass of the orchard-like valley below him, comrade
was looking for dead comrade. And among the searchers was the faithful
Bob, looking for his Old Captain, Crittenden, his honest heart nigh to
bursting, for already he had found Raincrow torn with a shell and he had
borne a body back to the horror-haunted little hospital under the creek
bank at the Bloody Ford--a body from which the head hung over his
shoulder--limp, with a bullet-hole through the neck--the body of his
Young Captain, Basil.
XII
Grafton sat, sobered and saddened, where he was awhile. The moon swung
upward white and peaceful, toward mild-eyed stars. Crickets chirped in
the grass around him, and nature's low night-music started in the wood
and the valley below, as though the earth had never known the hell of
fire and human passion that had rocked it through that day. Was there so
much difference between the creatures of the earth and the creatures of
his own proud estate? Had they not both been on the same brute level
that day? And, save for the wounded and the men who had comrades wounded
and dead, were not the unharmed as careless, almost as indifferent as
cricket and tree-toad to the tragedies of their sphere? Had there been
any inner change in any man who had fought that day that was not for the
worse? Would he himself get normal again, he wondered? Was there one
sensitive soul who fully realized the horror of that day? If so, he
would better have been at home. The one fact that stood above every
thought that had come to him that day was the utter, the startling
insignificance of death. Could that mean much more than a startlingly
sudden lowering of the estimate put upon human life? Across the hollow
behind him and from a tall palm over the Spanish trenches, rose, loud
and clear, the night-song of a mocking-bird. Over there the little men
in blue were toiling, toiling, toiling at their trenches; and along the
crest of the hill the big men in blue were toiling, toiling, toiling at
theirs. All through the night anxious eyes would be strained for
Chaffee, and at dawn the slaughter would begin again. Wherever he
looked, he could see with his mind's eye stark faces in the long grass
of the valley and the Spanish-bayonet clumps in the woods. All day he
had seen them there--dying of thirst, bleeding to death--alone. As he
went down the hill, lights were moving along the creek bed. A row of
muffled dead lay along the bed of the creek. Yet they were still
bringing in dead and wounded--a dead officer with his will and a letter
to his wife clasped in his hand. He had lived long enough to write them.
Hollow-eyed surgeons were moving here and there. Up the bank of the
creek, a voice rose:
"Come on, boys"--appealingly--"you're not going back on me. Come on, you
cursed cowards! Good! Good! I take it back, boys. _Now_ we've got 'em!"
Another voice: "Kill me, somebody--kill me. For God's sake, kill me.
Won't somebody give me a pistol? God--God...."
Once Grafton started into a tent. On the first cot lay a handsome boy,
with a white, frank face and a bullet hole through his neck, and he
recognized the dashing little fellow whom he had seen splashing through
the Bloody Ford at a gallop, dropping from his horse at a barbed-wire
fence, and dashing on afoot with the Rough Riders. The face bore a
strong likeness to the face he had seen on the hill--of the Kentuckian,
Crittenden--the Kentucky regular, as Grafton always mentally
characterized him--and he wondered if the boy were not the brother of
whom he had heard. The lad was still alive--but how could he live with
that wound in his throat? Grafton's eyes filled with tears: it was
horror--horror--all horror.
Here and there along the shadowed road lay a lifeless mule or horse or a
dead man. It was curious, but a man killed in battle was not like an
ordinary dead man--he was no more than he was--a lump of clay. It was
more curious still that one's pity seemed less acute for man than for
horse: it was the man's choice to take the risk--the horse had no
choice.
Here and there by the roadside was a grave. Comrades had halted there
long enough to save a comrade from the birds of prey. Every now and
then he would meet a pack-train loaded with ammunition and ration boxes;
or a wagon drawn by six mules and driven by a swearing, fearless,
tireless teamster. The forest was ringing with the noise of wheels, the
creaking of harness, the shouts of teamsters and the guards with them
and the officer in charge--all on the way to the working beavers on top
of the conquered hill.
Going the other way were the poor wounded, on foot, in little groups of
slowly moving twos and threes, and in jolting, springless army
wagons--on their way of torture to more torture in the rear. His heart
bled for them. And the way those men took their suffering! Sometimes the
jolting wagons were too much for human endurance, and soldiers would
pray for the driver, when he stopped, not to start again. In one
ambulance that he overtook, a man groaned. "Grit your teeth," said
another, an old Irish sergeant, sternly--"Grit your teeth; there's
others that's hurt worse'n you." The Sergeant lifted his head, and a
bandage showed that he was shot through the face, and Grafton heard not
another sound. But it was the slightly hurt--the men shot in the leg or
arm--who made the most noise. He had seen three men brought into the
hospital from San Juan. The surgeon took the one who was groaning. He
had a mere scratch on one leg. Another was dressed, and while the third
sat silently on a stool, still another was attended, and another, before
the surgeon turned to the man who was so patiently awaiting his turn.
"Where are you hurt?"
The man pointed to his left side.
"Through?"
"Yes, sir."
That day he had seen a soldier stagger out from the firing-line with
half his face shot away and go staggering to the rear without aid. On
the way he met a mounted staff officer, and he raised his hand to his
hatless, bleeding forehead, in a stern salute and, without a gesture for
aid, staggered on. The officer's eyes filled with tears.
"Lieutenant," said a trooper, just after the charge on the trenches, "I
think I'm wounded."
"Can you get to the rear without help?"
"I think I can, sir," and he started. After twenty paces he pitched
forward--dead. His wound was through the heart.
At the divisional hospital were more lights, tents, surgeons, stripped
figures on the tables under the lights; rows of figures in darkness
outside the tents; and rows of muffled shapes behind; the smell of
anæsthetics and cleansing fluids; heavy breathing, heavy groaning, and
an occasional curse on the night air.
Beyond him was a stretch of moonlit road and coming toward him was a
soldier, his arm in a sling, and staggering weakly from side to side.
With a start of pure gladness he saw that it was Crittenden, and he
advanced with his hand outstretched.
"Are you badly hurt?"
"Oh, no," said Crittenden, pointing to his hand and arm, but not
mentioning the bullet through his chest.
"Oh, but I'm glad. I thought you were gone sure when I saw you laid out
on the hill."
"Oh, I am all right," he said, and his manner was as courteous as though
he had been in a drawing-room; but, in spite of his nonchalance, Grafton
saw him stagger when he moved off.
"I say, you oughtn't to be walking," he called. "Let me help you," but
Crittenden waved him off.
"Oh, I'm all right," he repeated, and then he stopped. "Do you know
where the hospital is?"
"God!" said Grafton softly, and he ran back and put his arm around the
soldier--Crittenden laughing weakly:
"I missed it somehow."
"Yes, it's back here," said Grafton gently, and he saw now that the
soldier's eyes were dazed and that he breathed heavily and leaned on
him, laughing and apologizing now and then with a curious shame at his
weakness. As they turned from the road at the hospital entrance,
Crittenden dropped to the ground.
"Thank you, but I'm afraid I'll have to rest a little while now. I'm all
right now--don't bother--don't--bother. I'm all right. I feel kind o'
sleepy--somehow--very kind--thank--" and he closed his eyes. A surgeon
was passing and Grafton called him.
"He's all right," said the surgeon, with a swift look, adding shortly,
"but he must take his turn."
Grafton passed on--sick. On along the muddy road--through more
pack-trains, wagons, shouts, creakings, cursings. On through the
beautiful moonlight night and through the beautiful tropical forest,
under tall cocoanut and taller palm; on past the one long grave of the
Rough Riders--along the battle-line of the first little fight--through
the ghastly, many-coloured masses of hideous land-crabs shuffling
sidewise into the cactus and shuffling on with an unearthly rustling of
dead twig and fallen leaf: along the crest of the foothills and down to
the little town of Siboney, lighted, bustling with preparation for the
wounded in the tents; bustling at the beach with the unloading of
rations, the transports moving here and there far out on the moonlighted
sea. Down there were straggler, wounded soldier, teamster, mule-packer,
refugee Cuban, correspondent, nurse, doctor, surgeon--the flotsam and
jetsam of the battle of the day.
* * * * *
The moon rose.
"Water! water! water!"
Crittenden could not move. He could see the lights in the tents; the
half-naked figures stretched on tables; and doctors with bloody arms
about them--cutting and bandaging--one with his hands inside a man's
stomach, working and kneading the bowels as though they were dough. Now
and then four negro troopers would appear with something in a blanket,
would walk around the tent where there was a long trench, and, standing
at the head of this, two would lift up their ends of the blanket and the
other two would let go, and a shapeless shape would drop into the
trench. Up and down near by strolled two young Lieutenants, smoking
cigarettes--calmly, carelessly. He could see all this, but that was all
right; that was all right! Everything was all right except that long,
black shape in the shadow near him gasping:
"Water! water! water!"
He could not stand that hoarse, rasping whisper much longer. His canteen
he had clung to--the regular had taught him that--and he tried again to
move. A thousand needles shot through him--every one, it seemed, passing
through a nerve-centre and back the same path again. He heard his own
teeth crunch as he had often heard the teeth of a drunken man crunch,
and then he became unconscious. When he came to, the man was still
muttering; but this time it was a woman's name, and Crittenden lay
still. Good God!