The man at the youth's elbow was mumbling, as if to himself: "Oh, we 're in for it now!
oh, we 're in for it now!"
The captain of the company had been pacing excitedly to and fro in the rear. He coaxed
in schoolmistress fashion, as to a congregation of boys with primers. His talk was an
endless repetition. "Reserve your fire, boys--don't shoot till I tell you--save your fire--
wait till they get close up--don't be damned fools--"
Perspiration streamed down the youth's face, which was soiled like that of a weeping
urchin. He frequently, with a nervous movement, wiped his eyes with his coat sleeve. His
mouth was still a little ways ope.
He got the one glance at the foe-swarming field in front of him, and instantly ceased to
debate the question of his piece being loaded. Before he was ready to begin--before he
had announced to himself that he was about to fight--he threw the obedient well-balanced
rifle into position and fired a first wild shot. Directly he was working at his weapon like
an automatic affair.
He suddenly lost concern for himself, and forgot to look at a menacing fate. He became
not a man but a member. He felt that something of which he was a part--a regiment, an
army, a cause, or a country--was in crisis. He was welded into a common personality
which was dominated by a single desire. For some moments he could not flee no more
than a little finger can commit a revolution from a hand.
If he had thought the regiment was about to be annihilated perhaps he could have
amputated himself from it. But its noise gave him assurance. The regiment was like a
firework that, once ignited, proceeds superior to circumstances until its blazing vitality
fades. It wheezed and banged with a mighty power. He pictured the ground before it as
strewn with the discomfited.
There was a consciousness always of the presence of his comrades about him. He felt the
subtle battle brotherhood more potent even than the cause for which they were fighting. It
was a mysterious fraternity born of the smoke and danger of death.
He was at a task. He was like a carpenter who has made many boxes, making still another
box, only there was furious haste in his movements. He, in his thoughts, was careering
off in other places, even as the carpenter who as he works whistles and thinks of his
friend or his enemy, his home or a saloon. And these jolted dreams were never perfect to
him afterward, but remained a mass of blurred shapes.
Presently he began to feel the effects of the war atmosphere--a blistering sweat, a
sensation that his eyeballs were about to crack like hot stones. A burning roar filled his
ears.
Following this came a red rage. He developed the acute exasperation of a pestered
animal, a well-meaning cow worried by dogs. He had a mad feeling against his rifle,
