e, and the
tier of guns flamed a death's sickle and mowed it down. Breathless, broken,
the regiment fell back. When it reached the old man with the bright
handkerchief, it would have lifted him and carried him with it to the rear.
He would not go. He said, "Tell the 21st they can't get me till they take
those guns!"

The 21st mended its gaps and charged again. The old man set his hat on
his sword, waved it in the air, and cheered his men as they passed. They
passed him but to return. To go up against those lines of bellowing guns
was mere heroic madness. Bleeding, exhausted, the men put out their
hands for the old man. He drew his revolver. "I'll shoot anybody who
touches me! Tell the 21st they can't get their colonel till they take
those guns!"

The 21st charged a third time, in vain. It came back--a part of it came
back. The old man had fainted, and his men lifted and bore him away.

From the platform where he lay in the shadow of the three guns Edward
Cary looked out over Malvern Hill, the encompassing lowland, marsh and
forest and fields, the winding Turkey Creek and Western Creek, and to
the south the James. A wind had sprung up and was blowing the battle
smoke hither and yon. Here it hung heavily, and here a long lane was
opened. The sun was low and red behind a filmy veil, dark and ragged
like torn crape. He saw four gunboats on the river; they were throwing
the long, howling shells. The Monitor was there, an old foe--the cheese
box on a shingle. Edward shut his eyes and saw again Hampton Roads, and
how the Monitor had looked, darting from behind the Minnesota. The old
turtle, the old Merrimac ... and now she lay, a charred hull, far, far
beneath the James, by Craney Island.

The private on his right was a learned man. Edward addressed him. "Have
you ever thought, doctor, how fearfully dramatic is this world?"

"Yes. It's one of those facts that are too colossal to be seen.
Shakespeare says all the world's a stage. That's only a half-truth. The
world's a player, like the rest of us."

Below this niche stretched the grey battle-lines; above it, on the
hilltop, by the cannon and over half the slope beneath, spread the blue.
A forest stood behind the grey; out of it came the troops to the charge,
the flags tossing in front. The upward reaching fingers of coppice and
brush had their occupants, fragments of commands under cover, bands of
sharpshooters. And everywhere over the open, raked by the guns, were
dead