CHAPTER SIXTEEN
     
          A sputtering of musketry was always to be heard. Later, the
     cannon had entered the dispute. In the fog-filled air their voices
     made a thudding sound. The reverberations were continued. This part
     of the world led a strange, battleful existence.
          The youth's regiment was marched to relieve a command that had
     lain long in some damp trenches. The men took positions behind a
     curving line of rifle pits that had been turned up, like a large
     furrow, along the line of woods. Before them was a level stretch,
     peopled with short, deformed stumps. From the woods beyond came the
     dull popping of the skirmishers and pickets, firing in the fog.
     From the right came the noise of a terrific fracas.
          The men cuddled behind the small embankment and sat in easy
     attitudes awaiting their turn. Many had their backs to the firing.
     The youth's friend lay down, buried his face in his arms, and
     almost instantly, it seemed, he was in a deep sleep.
          The youth leaned his breast against the brown dirt and peered
     over at the woods and up and down the line. Curtains of trees
     interfered with his ways of vision. He could see the low line of
     trenches but for a short distance. A few idle flags were perched on
     the dirt hills. Behind them were rows of dark bodies with a few
     heads sticking curiously over the top.
          Always the noise of skirmishers came from the woods on the
     front and left, and the din on the right had grown to frightful
     proportions. The guns were roaring without an instant's pause for
     breath. It seemed that the cannon had come from all parts and were
     engaged in a stupendous wrangle. It became impossible to make a
     sentence heard.
          The youth wished to launch a joke---a quotation from
     newspapers. He desired to say, "All quiet on the Rappahannock," but
     the guns refused to permit even a comment upon their uproar. He
     never successfully concluded the sentence. But at last the guns
     stopped, and among the men in the rifle pits rumors again flew,
     like birds, but they were now for the most part black creatures who
     flapped their wings drearily near to the ground and refused to rise
     on any wings of hope. The men's faces grew doleful from the
     interpreting of omens. Tales of hesitation and uncertainty on the
     part of those high in place and responsibility came to their ears.
     Stories of disaster were borne into their minds with many proofs.
     This din of musketry on the right, growing like a released genie of
     sound, expressed and emphasized the army's plight.
          The men were disheartened and began to mutter. They made
     gestures expressive of the sentence: "Ah, what more can we do?" And
     it could always be seen that they were bewildered by the alleged
     news and could not fully comprehend a defeat.
          Before the gray mists had been totally obliterated by the
     sunrays, the regiment was marching in a spread column that was
     retiring carefully through the woods. The disordered, hurrying
     lines of the enemy could sometimes be seen down through the groves
     and little fields. They were yelling, shrill and exultant.
          At this sight the youth forgot many personal matters and
     became greatly enraged. He exploded in loud sentences. "By jiminey,
     we're generaled by a lot a lunkheads. "
          "More than one fellow has said that today," observed a man.
          His friend, recently aroused, was still very drowsy. He looked
     behind him until his mind took in the meaning of the movement. Then
     he sighed. "Oh, well, I suppose we got licked," he remarked sadly.
          The youth had a thought that it would not be handsome for him
     to freely condemn other men. He made an attempt to restrain
     himself, but the words upon his tongue were too bitter. He
     presently began a long and intricate denunciation of the commander
     of the forces.
          "Maybe, it wasn't all his fault---not all together. He did the
     best he knowed. It's our luck to get licked often," said his friend
     in a weary tone. He was trudging along with stooped shoulders and
     shifting eyes like a man who has been caned and kicked.
          "Well, don't we fight like the devil? Don't we do all that men
     can?" demanded the youth loudly.
          He was secretly dumbfounded at this sentiment when it came
     from his lips. For a moment his face lost its valor and he looked
     guiltily about him. But no one questioned his right to deal in such
     words, and presently he recovered his air of courage. He went on to
     repeat a statement he had heard going from group to group at the
     camp that morning. "The brigadier said he never saw a new regiment
     fight the way we fought yesterday, didn't he? And we didn't do
     better than any another regiment, did we? Well, then, you can't say
     it's the army's fault, can you?"
          In his reply, the friend's voice was stern. "A course not," he
     said. "No man dare say we don't fight like the devil. No man will
     ever dare say it. The boys fight like hell-roosters. But still---
     still, we don't have no luck."
          "Well, then, if we fight like the devil and don't ever whip,
     it must be the general's fault," said the youth grandly and
     decisively. "And I don't see any sense in fighting and fighting and
     fighting, yet always losing through some darned old lunkhead of a
     general."
          A sarcastic man who was tramping at the youth's side, then
     spoke lazily. "Maybe you think you fought the whole battle
     yesterday, Fleming," he remarked.
          The speech pierced the youth. Inwardly he was reduced to an
     abject pulp by these chance words. His legs quaked privately. He
     cast a frightened glance at the sarcastic man.
          "Why, no," he hastened to say in a conciliating voice, "I
     don't think I fought the whole battle yesterday."
          But the other seemed innocent of any deeper meaning.
     Apparently, he had no information. It was merely his habit. "Oh!"
     he replied in the same tone of calm derision.
          The youth, nevertheless, felt a threat. His mind shrank from
     going nearer to the danger, and thereafter he was silent. The
     significance of the sarcastic man's words took from him all loud
     moods that would make him appear prominent. He became suddenly a
     modest person.
          There was low-toned talk among the troops. The officers were
     impatient and snappy, their countenances clouded with the tales of
     misfortune. The troops, sifting through the forest, were sullen. In
     the youth's company once a man's laugh rang out. A dozen soldiers
     turned their faces quickly toward him and frowned with vague
     displeasure.
          The noise of firing dogged their footsteps. Sometimes, it
     seemed to be driven a little way, but it always returned again with
     increased insolence. The men muttered and cursed, throwing black
     looks in its direction.
          In a clear space the troops were at last halted. Regiments and
     brigades, broken and detached through their encounters with
     thickets, grew together again and lines were faced toward the
     pursuing bark of the enemy's infantry.
          This noise, following like the yellings of eager, metallic
     hounds, increased to a loud and joyous burst, and then, as the sun
     went serenely up the sky, throwing illuminating rays into the
     gloomy thickets, it broke forth into prolonged pealings. The woods
     began to crackle as if afire.
          "Whoop-a-dadee," said a man, "here we are! Everybody fighting.
     Blood and destruction. "
          "I was willing to bet they'd attack as soon as the sun got
     fairly up," savagely asserted the lieutenant who commanded the
     youth's company. He jerked without mercy at his little mustache. He
     strode to and fro with dark dignity in the rear of his men, who
     were lying down behind whatever protection they had collected.
          A battery had trundled into position in the rear and was
     thoughtfully shelling the distance. The regiment, unmolested as
     yet, awaited the moment when the gray shadows of the woods before
     them should be slashed by the lines of flame. There was much
     growling and swearIng.
          "Good God," the youth grumbled, "we're always being chased
     around like rats! It makes me sick. Nobody seems to know where we
     go or why we go. We just get fired around from pillar to post and
     get licked here and get licked there, and nobody knows what it's
     done for. It makes a man feel like a damn kitten in a bag. Now, I'd
     like to know what the eternal thunders we was marched into these
     woods for anyhow, unless it was to give the rebs a regular pot shot
     at us. We came in here and got our legs all tangled up in these
     cussed briers, and then we begin to fight and the rebs had an easy
     time of it. Don't tell me it's just luck! I know better. It's this
     darned old---"
          The friend seemed jaded, but he interrupted his comrade with
     a voice of calm confidence. "It'll turn out all right in the end,"
     he said.
          "Oh, the devil it will! You always talk like a dog-hanged
     parson. Don't tell me! I know---"
          At this time there was an interposition by the savage-minded
     lieutenant, who was obliged to vent some of his inward
     dissatisfaction upon his men. "You boys shut right up! There no
     need a your wasting your breath in long-winded arguments about this
     and that and the other. You've been jawing like a lot a old hens.
     All you've got to do is to fight, and you'll get plenty a that to
     do in about ten minutes. Less talking and more fighting is what's
     best for you boys. I never saw such gabbling jackasses."
          He paused, ready to pounce upon any man who might have the
     temerity to reply. No words being said, he resumed his dignified
     pacing.
          "There's too much chin music and too little fighting in this
     war, anyhow," he said to them, turning his head for a final remark.
          The day had grown more white, until the sun shed his full
     radiance upon the thronged forest. A sort of a gust of battle came
     sweeping toward that part of the line where lay the youth's
     regiment. The front shifted a trifle to meet it squarely. There was
     a wait. In this part of the field there passed slowly the intense
     moments that precede the tempest.
          A single rifle flashed in a thicket before the regiment. In an
     instant it was joined by many others. There was a mighty song of
     clashes and crashes that went sweeping through the woods. The guns
     in the rear, aroused and enraged by shells that had been thrown
     burr-like at them, suddenly involved themselves in a hideous
     altercation with another band of guns. The battle roar settled to
     a rolling thunder, which was a single long explosion.
          In the regiment there was a peculiar kind of hesitation
     denoted in the attitudes of the men. They were worn, exhausted,
     having slept but little and labored much. They rolled their eyes
     toward the advancing battle as they stood awaiting the shock. Some
     shrank and flinched. They stood as men tied to stakes.