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Page 66
The blue whirl of men got very near, until it seemed that in
truth there would be a close and frightful scuffle. There was
an expressed disdain in the opposition of the little group,
that changed the meaning of the cheers of the men in blue.
They became yells of wrath, directed, personal. The cries of the
two parties were now in sound an interchange of scathing insults.
They in blue showed their teeth; their eyes shone all white.
They launched themselves as at the throats of those who stood
resisting. The space between dwindled to an insignificant distance.
The youth had centered the gaze of his soul upon that other flag.
Its possession would be high pride. It would express bloody
minglings, near blows. He had a gigantic hatred for those who
made great difficulties and complications. They caused it to be
as a craved treasure of mythology, hung amid tasks and contrivances
of danger.
He plunged like a mad horse at it. He was resolved it should
not escape if wild blows and darings of blows could seize it.
His own emblem, quivering and aflare, was winging toward the other.
It seemed there would shortly be an encounter of strange beaks
and claws, as of eagles.
The swirling body of blue men came to a sudden halt at close and
disastrous range and roared a swift volley. The group in gray was
split and broken by this fire, but its riddled body still fought.
The men in blue yelled again and rushed in upon it.
The youth, in his leapings, saw, as through a mist, a picture
of four or five men stretched upon the ground or writhing upon
their knees with bowed heads as if they had been stricken
by bolts from the sky. Tottering among them was the rival
color bearer, whom the youth saw had been bitten vitally by
the bullets of the last formidable volley. He perceived this man
fighting a last struggle, the struggle of one whose legs are
grasped by demons. It was a ghastly battle. Over his face was
the bleach of death, but set upon it was the dark and hard lines
of desperate purpose. With this terrible grin of resolution he
hugged his precious flag to him and was stumbling and staggering
in his design to go the way that led to safety for it.
But his wounds always made it seem that his feet were retarded,
held, and he fought a grim fight, as with invisible ghouls
fastened greedily upon his limbs. Those in advance of the
scampering blue men, howling cheers, leaped at the fence.
The despair of the lost was in his eyes as he glanced back
at them.
The youth's friend went over the obstruction in a tumbling heap
and sprang at the flag as a panther at prey. He pulled at it
and, wrenching it free, swung up its red brilliancy with a mad
cry of exultation even as the color bearer, gasping, lurched over
in a final throe and, stiffening convulsively, turned his dead
face to the ground. There was much blood upon the grass blades.
At the place of success there began more wild clamorings of cheers.
The men gesticulated and bellowed in an ecstasy. When they spoke
it was as if they considered their listener to be a mile away.
What hats and caps were left to them they often slung high in the air.
At one part of the line four men had been swooped upon, and they
now sat as prisoners. Some blue men were about them in an eager
and curious circle. The soldiers had trapped strange birds, and
there was an examination. A flurry of fast questions was in the air.
One of the prisoners was nursing a superficial wound in the foot.
He cuddled it, baby-wise, but he looked up from it often to
curse with an astonishing utter abandon straight at the noses
of his captors. He consigned them to red regions; he called upon
the pestilential wrath of strange gods. And with it all he was
singularly free from recognition of the finer points of the
conduct of prisoners of war. It was as if a clumsy clod had trod
upon his toe and he conceived it to be his privilege, his duty,
to use deep, resentful oaths.
Another, who was a boy in years, took his plight with great
calmness and apparent good nature. He conversed with the men
in blue, studying their faces with his bright and keen eyes.
They spoke of battles and conditions. There was an acute
interest in all their faces during this exchange of view points.
It seemed a great satisfaction to hear voices from where all had
been darkness and speculation.
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