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Page 63
In another direction he saw a magnificent brigade going with the
evident intention of driving the enemy from a wood. They passed
in out of sight and presently there was a most awe-inspiring
racket in the wood. The noise was unspeakable. Having stirred
this prodigious uproar, and, apparently, finding it too prodigious,
the brigade, after a little time, came marching airily out again
with its fine formation in nowise disturbed. There were no traces
of speed in its movements. The brigade was jaunty and seemed to
point a proud thumb at the yelling wood.
On a slope to the left there was a long row of guns, gruff
and maddened, denouncing the enemy, who, down through the woods,
were forming for another attack in the pitiless monotony of conflicts.
The round red discharges from the guns made a crimson flare and a high,
thick smoke. Occasional glimpses could be caught of groups of the
toiling artillerymen. In the rear of this row of guns stood a house,
calm and white, amid bursting shells. A congregation of horses,
tied to a long railing, were tugging frenziedly at their bridles.
Men were running hither and thither.
The detached battle between the four regiments lasted for some time.
There chanced to be no interference, and they settled their dispute
by themselves. They struck savagely and powerfully at each other
for a period of minutes, and then the lighter-hued regiments faltered
and drew back, leaving the dark-blue lines shouting. The youth could
see the two flags shaking with laughter amid the smoke remnants.
Presently there was a stillness, pregnant with meaning. The blue
lines shifted and changed a trifle and stared expectantly at the
silent woods and fields before them. The hush was solemn and
churchlike, save for a distant battery that, evidently unable
to remain quiet, sent a faint rolling thunder over the ground.
It irritated, like the noises of unimpressed boys. The men
imagined that it would prevent their perched ears from hearing
the first words of the new battle.
Of a sudden the guns on the slope roared out a message of
warning. A spluttering sound had begun in the woods. It swelled
with amazing speed to a profound clamor that involved the earth
in noises. The splitting crashes swept along the lines until an
interminable roar was developed. To those in the midst of it it
became a din fitted to the universe. It was the whirring and
thumping of gigantic machinery, complications among the smaller stars.
The youth's ears were filled cups. They were incapable of hearing more.
On an incline over which a road wound he saw wild and desperate
rushes of men perpetually backward and forward in riotous surges.
These parts of the opposing armies were two long waves that
pitched upon each other madly at dictated points. To and fro
they swelled. Sometimes, one side by its yells and cheers
would proclaim decisive blows, but a moment later the other side
would be all yells and cheers. Once the youth saw a spray of
light forms go in houndlike leaps toward the waving blue lines.
There was much howling, and presently it went away with a vast
mouthful of prisoners. Again, he saw a blue wave dash with such
thunderous force against a gray obstruction that it seemed to
clear the earth of it and leave nothing but trampled sod.
And always in their swift and deadly rushes to and fro the
men screamed and yelled like maniacs.
Particular pieces of fence or secure positions behind collections
of trees were wrangled over, as gold thrones or pearl bedsteads.
There were desperate lunges at these chosen spots seemingly
every instant, and most of them were bandied like light toys
between the contending forces. The youth could not tell from the
battle flags flying like crimson foam in many directions which
color of cloth was winning.
His emaciated regiment bustled forth with undiminished fierceness
when its time came. When assaulted again by bullets, the men
burst out in a barbaric cry of rage and pain. They bent their
heads in aims of intent hatred behind the projected hammers of
their guns. Their ramrods clanged loud with fury as their eager
arms pounded the cartridges into the rifle barrels. The front of
the regiment was a smoke-wall penetrated by the flashing points
of yellow and red.
Wallowing in the fight, they were in an astonishingly short time resmudged.
They surpassed in stain and dirt all their previous appearances. Moving
to and fro with strained exertion, jabbering all the while, they were,
with their swaying bodies, black faces, and glowing eyes, like strange
and ugly fiends jigging heavily in the smoke.
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