ompanions. Some of the
wounded crawled out and away, but many lay still, their bodies twisted
into impossible shapes.

The youth looked once for his friend. He saw a vehement young man,
powder-smeared and frowzled, whom he knew to be him. The lieutenant,
also, was unscathed in his position at the rear. He had continued to
curse, but it was now with the air of a man who was using his last box
of oaths.

For the fire of the regiment had begun to wane and drip. The robust
voice, that had come strangely from the thin ranks, was growing rapidly
weak.

Chapter 23

The colonel came running along the back of the line. There were other
officers following him. "We must charge'm!" they shouted. "We must
charge'm!" they cried with resentful voices, as if anticipating a
rebellion against this plan by the men.

The youth, upon hearing the shouts, began to study the distance between
him and the enemy. He made vague calculations. He saw that to be firm
soldiers they must go forward. It would be death to stay in the
present place, and with all the circumstances to go backward would
exalt too many others. Their hope was to push the galling foes away
from the fence.

He expected that his companions, weary and stiffened, would have to be
driven to this assault, but as he turned toward them he perceived with
a certain surprise that they were giving quick and unqualified
expressions of assent. There was an ominous, clanging overture to the
charge when the shafts of the bayonets rattled upon the rifle barrels.
At the yelled words of command the soldiers sprang forward in eager
leaps. There was new and unexpected force in the movement of the
regiment. A knowledge of its faded and jaded condition made the charge
appear like a paroxysm, a display of the strength that comes before a
final feebleness. The men scampered in insane fever of haste, racing
as if to achieve a sudden success before an exhilarating fluid should
leave them. It was a blind and despairing rush by the collection of
men in dusty and tattered blue, over a green sward and under a sapphire
sky, toward a fence, dimly outlined in smoke, from behind which
sputtered the fierce rifles of enemies.

The youth kept the bright colors to the front. He was waving his free
arm in furious circles, the while shrieking mad calls and appeals,
urging on those that did not need to be urged, for it seemed that the
mob of blue men hurling themselves on the danger