which could only be used against one life at a time. He wished to rush forward and
strangle with his fingers. He craved a power that would enable him to make a world-
sweeping gesture and brush all back. His impotency appeared to him, and made his rage
into that of a driven beast.
Buried in the smoke of many rifles his anger was directed not so much against the men
whom he knew were rushing toward him as against the swirling battle phantoms which
were choking him, stuffing their smoke robes down his parched throat. He fought
frantically for respite for his senses, for air, as a babe being smothered attacks the deadly
blankets.
There was a blare of heated rage mingled with a certain expression of intentness on all
faces. Many of the men were making low-toned noises with their mouths, and these
subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued
cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued cheers, snarls,
imprecations, prayers, made a wild, barbaric these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations,
prayers, made a wild, barbaric song that went as an undercurrent of sound, strange and
chantlike with the resounding chords of the war march. The man at the youth's elbow was
babbling. In it there was something soft and tender like the monologue of a babe. The tall
soldier was swearing in a loud voice. From his lips came a black procession of curious
oaths. Of a sudden another broke out in a querulous way like a man who has mislaid his
hat. "Well, why don't they support us? Why don't they send supports? Do they think--"
The youth in his battle sleep heard this as one who dozes hears.
There was a singular absence of heroic poses. The men bending and surging in their haste
and rage were in every impossible attitude. The steel ramrods clanked and clanged with
incessant din as the men pounded them furiously into the hot rifle barrels. The flaps of
the cartridge boxes were all unfastened, and bobbed idiotically with each movement. The
rifles, once loaded, were jerked to the shoulder and fired without apparent aim into the
smoke or at one of the blurred and shifting forms which upon the field before the
regiment had been growing larger and larger like puppets under a magician's hand.
The officers, at their intervals, rearward, neglected to stand in picturesque attitudes. They
were bobbing to and fro roaring directions and encouragements. The dimensions of their
howls were extraordinary. They expended their lungs with prodigal wills. And often they
nearly stood upon their heads in their anxiety to observe the enemy on the other side of
the tumbling smoke.
The lieutenant of the youth's company had encountered a soldier who had fled screaming
at the first volley of his comrades. Behind the lines these two were acting a little isolated
scene. The man was blubbering and staring with sheeplike eyes at the lieutenant, who had
seized him by the collar and was pommeling him. He drove him back into the ranks with
many blows. The soldier went mechanically, dully, with his animal-like eyes upon the
officer. Perhaps there was to him a divinity expressed in the voice of the other--stern,
