Crane The red badge of courage

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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.
The third captive sat with a morose countenance. He
preserved a stoical and cold attitude. To all advances he
made one reply without variation, "Ah, go t' hell!"
The last of the four was always silent and, for the most
part, kept his face turned in unmolested directions. From the
views the youth received he seemed to be in a state of
absolute dejection. Shame was upon him, and with it
profound regret that he was, perhaps, no more to be counted
in the ranks of his fellows. The youth could detect no
expression that would allow him to believe that the other
was giving a thought to his narrowed future, the pictured
dungeons, perhaps, and starvations and brutalities, liable to
the imagination. All to be seen was shame for captivity and
regret for the right to antagonize.
After the men had celebrated sufficiently they settled
down behind the old rail fence, on the opposite side to the
one from which their foes had been driven. A few shot
perfunctorily at distant marks.
There was some long grass. The youth nestled in it and
rested, making a convenient rail support the flag. His friend,
jubilant and glorified, holding his treasure with vanity, came
to him there. They sat side by side and congratulated each
other.
Ebd
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Chapter 24
The roarings that had stretched in a long line of sound
across the face of the forest began to grow intermittent and
weaker. The stentorian speeches of the artillery continued in
some distant encounter, but the crashes of the musketry had
almost ceased. The youth and his friend of a sudden looked
up, feeling a deadened form of distress at the waning of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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