A Mystery of Heroism
Stephen Crane
The dark uniforms of the men were so coated with dust from the incessant
wrestling of the two armies that the regiment almost seemed a part of the clay
bank which shielded them from the shells. On the top of the hill a battery was
arguing in tremendous roars with some other guns, and to the eye of the
infantry, the artillerymen, the guns, the caissons, the horses, were distinctly
outlined upon the blue sky. When a piece was fired, a red streak as round as a
log flashed low in the heavens, like a monstrous bolt of lightning. The men of
the battery wore white duck trousers, which somehow emphasized their legs, and
when they ran and crowded in little groups at the bidding of the shouting
officers, it was more impressive than usual to the infantry.
Fred Collins of A Company was saying: “Thunder, I wisht I had a drink. Ain’t
there any water round here?” Then somebody yelled: “There goes th’ bugler!”
As the eyes of half of the regiment swept in one machine-like movement, there
was an instant’s picture of a horse in a great convulsive leap of a death wound
and a rider leaning back with a crooked arm and spread fingers before his face.
On the ground was the crimson terror of an exploding shell, with fibers of flame
that seemed like lances. A glittering bugle swung clear of the rider’s back as
fell headlong the horse and the man. In the air was an odor as from a
conflagration.
Sometimes they of the infantry looked down at a fair little meadow which spread
at their feet. Its long, green grass was rippling gently in a breeze. Beyond it
was the gray form of a house half torn to pieces by shells and by the busy axes
of soldiers who had pursued firewood. The line of an old fence was now dimly
marked by long weeds and by an occasional post. A shell had blown the well house
to fragments. Little lines of gray smoke ribboning upward from some embers
indicated the place where had stood the barn.
From beyond a curtain of green woods there came the sound of some stupendous
scuffle as if two animals of the size of islands were fighting. At a distance
there were occasional appearances of swift-moving men, horses, batteries, flags,
and, with the crashing of infantry, volleys were heard, often, wild and frenzied
cheers. In the midst of it all, Smith and Ferguson, two privates of A Company,
were engaged in a heated discussion, which involved the greatest questions of
the national existence.
The battery on the hill presently engaged in a frightful duel. The white legs of
the gunners scampered this way and that way and the officers redoubled their
shouts. The guns, with their demeanors of stolidity and courage, were typical of
something infinitely self-possessed in this clamor of death that swirled around
the hill.
One of a “swing” team was suddenly smitten quivering to the ground and his
maddened brethren dragged his torn body in their struggle to escape from this
turmoil and danger. A young soldier astride one of the leaders swore and fumed
in his saddle and furiously jerked at the bridle. An officer screamed out an
order so violently that his voice broke and ended the sentence in a falsetto
shriek.
The leading company of the infantry regiment was somewhat exposed and the
colonel ordered it moved more fully under the shelter of the hill. There was the
clank of steel against steel.
A lieutenant of the battery rode down and passed them, holding his right arm
carefully in his left hand. And it was as if this arm was not at all a part of
him, but belonged to another man. His sober and reflective charger went slowly.
The officer’s face was grimy and perspiring and his uniform was tousled as if he
had been in direct grapple with an enemy. He smiled grimly when the men stared
at him. He turned his horse toward the meadow.
Collins of A Company said: “I wisht I had a drink. I bet there’s water in that
there ol’ well yonder!”
“Yes; but how you goin’ to git it?”
For the little meadow which intervened was now suffering a terrible onslaught of
shells. Its green and beautiful calm had vanished utterly. Brown earth was being
flung in monstrous handfuls. And there was a massacre of the young blades of
grass. They were being torn, burned, obliterated. Some curious fortune of the
battle had made this gentle little meadow the object of the red hate of the
shells and each one as it exploded seemed like an imprecation in the face of a
maiden.
The wounded officer who was riding across this expanse said to himself: “Why,
they couldn’t shoot any harder if the whole army was massed here!”
A shell struck the gray ruins of the house and as, after the roar, the shattered
wall fell in fragments, there was a noise which resembled the flapping of
shutters during a wild gale of winter. Indeed the infantry paused in the shelter
of the bank, appeared as men standing upon a shore contemplating a madness of
the sea. The angel of calamity had under its glance the battery upon the hill.
Fewer white-legged men labored about the guns. A shell had smitten one of the
pieces, and after the flare, the smoke, the dust, the wrath of this blow was
gone, it was possible to see white legs stretched horizontally upon the ground.
And at that interval to the rear, where it is the business of battery horses to
stand with their noses to the fight awaiting the command to drag their guns out
of the destruction or into it or wheresoever these incomprehensible humans
demanded with whip and spur—in this line of passive and dumb spectators, whose
fluttering hearts yet would not let them forget the iron laws of man’s control
of them—in this rank of brute soldiers there had been relentless and hideous
carnage. From the ruck of bleeding and prostrate horses, the men of the infantry
could see one animal raising its stricken body with its forelegs and turning its
nose with mystic and profound eloquence toward the sky.
Some comrades joked Collins about his thirst. “Well, if yeh want a drink so bad,
why don’t yeh go git it?”
“Well, I will in a minnet if yeh don’t shut up.”
A lieutenant of artillery floundered his horse straight down the hill with as
great concern as if it were level ground. As he galloped past the colonel of the
infantry, he threw up his hand in swift salute. “We’ve got to get out of that,”
he roared angrily. He was a black-bearded officer, and his eyes, which resembled
beads, sparkled like those of an insane man. His jumping horse sped along the
column of infantry.
The fat major standing carelessly with his sword held horizontally behind him
and with his legs far apart, looked after the receding horseman and laughed. “He
wants to get back with orders pretty quick or there’ll be no batt’ry left,” he
observed.
The wise young captain of the second company hazarded to the lieutenant colonel
that the enemy’s infantry would probably soon attack the hill, and the
lieutenant colonel snubbed him.
A private in one of the rear companies looked out over the meadow and then
turned to a companion and said: “Look there, Jim.” It was the wounded officer
from the battery, who some time before had started to ride across the meadow,
supporting his right arm carefully with his left hand. This man had encountered
a shell apparently at a time when no one perceived him and he could now be seen
lying face downward with a stirruped foot stretched across the body of his dead
horse. A leg of the charger extended slantingly upward precisely as stiff as a
stake. Around this motionless pair the shells still howled.
There was a quarrel in A Company. Collins was shaking his fist in the faces of
some laughing comrades. “Dern yeh! I ain’t afraid t’ go. If yeh say much, I will
go!”
“Of course, yeh will! Yeh’ll run through that there medder, won’t yeh?”
Collins said, in a terrible voice: “You see, now!” At this ominous threat his
comrades broke into renewed jeers.
Collins gave them a dark scowl and went to find his captain. The latter was
conversing with the colonel of the regiment.
“Captain,” said Collins, saluting and standing at attention. In those days all
trousers bagged at the knees. “Captain, I want t’ git permission to go git some
water from that there well over yonder!”
The colonel and the captain swung about simultaneously and stared across the
meadow. The captain laughed. “You must be pretty thirsty, Collins?”
“Yes, sir; I am.”
“Well—ah,” said the captain. After a moment he asked: “Can’t you wait?”
“No, sir.”
The colonel was watching Collins’s face. “Look here, my lad,” he said, in a
pious sort of a voice. “Look here, my lad.” Collins was not a lad. “Don’t you
think that’s taking pretty big risks for a little drink of water?”
“I dunno,” said Collins, uncomfortably. Some of the resentment toward his
companions, which perhaps had forced him into this affair, was beginning to
fade. “I dunno wether ’tis.”
The colonel and the captain contemplated him for a time.
“Well,” said the captain finally.
“Well,” said the colonel, “if you want to go, why go.”
Collins saluted. “Much obliged t’ yeh.”
As he moved away the colonel called after him. “Take some of the other boys’
canteens with you an’ hurry back now.”
“Yes, sir. I will.”
The colonel and the captain looked at each other then, for it had suddenly
occurred that they could not for the life of them tell whether Collins wanted to
go or whether he did not.
They turned to regard Collins and as they perceived him surrounded by
gesticulating comrades the colonel said: “Well, by thunder! I guess he’s going.”
Collins appeared as a man dreaming. In the midst of the questions, the advice,
the warnings, all the excited talk of his company mates, he maintained a curious
silence.
They were very busy in preparing him for his ordeal. When they inspected him
carefully it was somewhat like the examination that grooms give a horse before a
race; and they were amazed, staggered by the whole affair. Their astonishment
found vent in strange repetitions.
“Are yeh sure a-goin’?” they demanded again and again.
“Certainly I am,” cried Collins, at last furiously.
He strode sullenly away from them. He was swinging five or six canteens by their
cords. It seemed that his cap would not remain firmly on his head, and often he
reached and pulled it down over his brow.
There was a general movement in the compact column. The long animal-like thing
moved slightly. Its four hundred eyes were turned upon the figure of Collins.
“Well, sir, if that ain’t th’ derndest thing. I never thought Fred Collins had
the blood in him for that kind of business.”
“What’s he goin’ to do, anyhow?”
“He’s goin’ to that well there after water.”
“We ain’t dyin’ of thirst, are we? That’s foolishness.”
“Well, somebody put him up to it an’ he’s doin’ it.”
“Say, he must be a desperate cuss.”
When Collins faced the meadow and walked away from the regiment, he was vaguely
conscious that a chasm, the deep valley of all prides, was suddenly between him
and his comrades. It was provisional, but the provision was that he return as a
victor. He had blindly been led by quaint emotions and laid himself under an
obligation to walk squarely up to the face of death.
But he was not sure that he wished to make a retraction even if he could do so
without shame. As a matter of truth he was sure of very little. He was mainly
surprised.
It seemed to him supernaturally strange that he had allowed his mind to maneuver
his body into such a situation. He understood that it might be called
dramatically great.
However, he had no full appreciation of anything excepting that he was actually
conscious of being dazed. He could feel his dulled mind groping after the form
and color of this incident.
Too, he wondered why he did not feel some keen agony of fear cutting his sense
like a knife. He wondered at this because human expression had said loudly for
centuries that men should feel afraid of certain things and that all men who did
not feel this fear were phenomena, heroes.