Caspar communed with himself and decided that he was not frightened. He was eager and alert; he thought that now his obligation to his country, or himself, was to be faced, and he was mad to prove to old Reilly and the others that after all he was a very capable soldier.
III
Old Reilly was stumping along the line of his brigade and mumbling like a man with a mouthful of grass. The fire from the enemy’s position was incredible in its swift fury, and Reilly’s brigade was getting its share of a very bad ordeal. The old man’s face was of the colour of a tomato, and in his rage he mouthed and sputtered strangely. As he pranced along his thin line, scornfully erect, voices arose from the grass beseeching him to take care of himself. At his heels scrambled a bugler with pallid skin and clenched teeth, a chalky, trembling youth, who kept his eye on old Reilly’s back and followed it.
The old gentleman was quite mad. Apparently he thought the whole thing a dreadful mess, but now that his brigade was irrevocably in it he was full-tilting here and everywhere to establish some irreproachable, immaculate kind of behaviour on the part of every man jack in his brigade. The intentions of the three venerable Colonels were the same. They stood behind their lines, quiet, stern, courteous old fellows, admonishing their regiments to be very pretty in the face of such a hail of magazine-rifle and machine-gun fire as has never in this world been confronted save by beardless savages when the white man has found occasion to take his burden to some new place.
And the regiments were pretty. The men lay on their little stomachs and got peppered according to the law and said nothing, as the good blood pumped out into the grass, and even if a solitary rookie tried to get a decent reason to move to some haven of rational men, the cold voice of an officer made him look criminal with a shame that was a credit to his regimental education. Behind Reilly’s command was a bullet-torn jungle through which it could not move as a brigade; ahead of it were Spanish trenches on hills. Reilly considered that he was in a fix no doubt, but he said this only to himself. Suddenly he saw on the right a little point of blue-shirted men already half-way up the hill. It was some pathetic fragment of the Sixth United States Infantry. Chagrined, shocked, horrified, Reilly bellowed to his bugler, and the chalked-faced youth unlocked his teeth and sounded the charge by rushes.
The men formed hastily and grimly, and rushed. Apparently there awaited them only the fate of respectable soldiers. But they went because — of the opinions of others, perhaps. They went because — no loud-mouthed lot of jail-birds such as the Twenty-Seventh Infantry could do anything that they could not do better. They went because Reilly ordered it. They went because they went.
And yet not a man of them to this day has made a public speech explaining precisely how he did the whole thing and detailing with what initiative and ability he comprehended and defeated a situation which he did not comprehend at all.
Reilly never saw the top of the hill. He was heroically striving to keep up with his men when a bullet ripped quietly through his left lung, and he fell back into the arms of the bugler, who received him as he would have received a Christmas present. The three venerable Colonels inherited the brigade in swift succession. The senior commanded for about fifty seconds, at the end of which he was mortally shot. Before they could get the news to the next in rank he, too, was shot. The junior Colonel ultimately arrived with a lean and puffing little brigade at the top of the hill. The men lay down and fired volleys at whatever was practicable.
In and out of the ditch-like trenches lay the Spanish dead, lemon-faced corpses dressed in shabby blue and white ticking. Some were huddled down comfortably like sleeping children; one had died in the attitude of a man flung back in a dentist’s chair; one sat in the trench with his chin sunk despondently to his breast; few preserved a record of the agitation of battle. With the greater number it was as if death had touched them so gently, so lightly, that they had not known of it. Death had come to them rather in the form of an opiate than of a bloody blow.
But the arrived men in the blue shirts had no thought of the sallow corpses. They were eagerly exchanging a hail of shots with the Spanish second line, whose ash-coloured entrenchments barred the way to a city white amid trees. In the pauses the men talked.
“We done the best. Old E Company got there. Why, one time the hull of B Company was behind us.”
“Jones, he was the first man up. I saw ‘im.”
“Which Jones?”
“Did you see ol’ Two-bars runnin’ like a land-crab? Made good time, too. He hit only in the high places. He’s all right.”
“The Lootenant s all right, too. He was a good ten yards ahead of the best of us. I hated him at the post, but for this here active service there’s none of ’em can touch him.”
“This is mighty different from being at the post.”
“Well, we done it, an’ it wasn’t b’cause I thought it could be done. When we started, I ses to m’self: ‘Well, here goes a lot o’ d —— d fools.’”
“‘Tain’t over yet.”
“Oh, they’ll never git us back from here. If they start to chase us back from here we’ll pile ’em up so high the last ones can’t climb over. We’ve come this far, an’ we’ll stay here. I ain’t done pantin’.”
“Anything is better than packin’ through that jungle an’ gettin’ blistered from front, rear, an’ both flanks. I’d rather tackle another hill than go trailin’ in them woods, so thick you can’t tell whether you are one man or a division of cav’lry.”
“Where’s that young kitchen-soldier, Cadogan, or whatever his name is. Ain’t seen him to-day.”
“Well, I seen him. He was right in with it. He got shot, too, about half up the hill, in the leg. I seen it. He’s all right. Don’t worry about him. He’s all right.”
“I seen ‘im, too. He done his stunt. As soon as I can git this piece of barbed-wire entanglement out o’ me throat I’ll give ‘m a cheer.”
“He ain’t shot at all b’cause there he stands, there. See ‘im?”
Rearward, the grassy slope was populous with little groups of men searching for the wounded. Reilly’s brigade began to dig with its bayonets and shovel with its meat-ration cans.
IV
Senator Cadogan paced to and fro in his private parlour and smoked small, brown weak cigars. These little wisps seemed utterly inadequate to console such a ponderous satrap.
It was the evening of the 1st of July, 1898, and the Senator was immensely excited, as could be seen from the superlatively calm way in which he called out to his private secretary, who was in an adjoining room. The voice was serene, gentle, affectionate, low.
“Baker, I wish you’d go over again to the War Department and see if they’ve heard anything about Caspar.”
A very bright-eyed, hatchet-faced young man appeared in a doorway, pen still in hand. He was hiding a nettle-like irritation behind all the finished audacity of a smirk, sharp, lying, trustworthy young politician. “I’ve just got back from there, sir,” he suggested.
The Skowmulligan war-horse lifted his eyes and looked for a short second into the eyes of his private secretary. It was not a glare or an eagle glance; it was something beyond the practice of an actor; it was simply meaning. The clever private secretary grabbed his hat and was at once enthusiastically away. “All right, sir,” he cried. “I’ll find out.”
The War Department was ablaze with light, and messengers were running. With the assurance of a retainer of an old house Baker made his way through much small-calibre vociferation. There was rumour of a big victory; there was rumour of a big defeat. In the corridors various watchdogs arose from their armchairs and asked him of his business in tones of uncertainty which in no wise compared with their previous habitual deference to the private secretary of the war-horse of Skowmulligan.
Ultimately Baker arrived in a room where some kind of head clerk sat writing feverishly at a roll-top desk. Baker asked a question, and the head clerk mumbled profanely without lifting his head. Apparently he said: �
�How in the blankety-blank blazes do I know?”
The private secretary let his jaw fall. Surely some new spirit had come suddenly upon the heart of Washington — a spirit which Baker understood to be almost defiantly indifferent to the wishes of Senator Cadogan, a spirit which was not courteously oily. What could it mean? Baker’s fox-like mind sprang wildly to a conception of overturned factions, changed friends, new combinations. The assurance which had come from experience of a broad political situation suddenly left him, and he would not have been amazed if some one had told him that Senator Cadogan now controlled only six votes in the State of Skowmulligan. “Well,” he stammered in his bewilderment, “well — there isn’t any news of the old man’s son, hey?” Again the head clerk replied blasphemously.
Eventually Baker retreated in disorder from the presence of this head clerk, having learned that the latter did not give a —— if Caspar Cadogan were sailing through Hades on an ice yacht.
Baker stormed other and more formidable officials. In fact, he struck as high as he dared. They one and all flung him short, hard words, even as men pelt an annoying cur with pebbles. He emerged from the brilliant light, from the groups of men with anxious, puzzled faces, and as he walked back to the hotel he did not know if his name were Baker or Cholmondeley.
However, as he walked up the stairs to the Senator’s rooms he contrived to concentrate his intellect upon a manner of speaking.
The war-horse was still pacing his parlour and smoking. He paused at Baker’s entrance. “Well?”
“Mr. Cadogan,” said the private secretary coolly, “they told me at the Department that they did not give a cuss whether your son was alive or dead.”
The Senator looked at Baker and smiled gently. “What’s that, my boy?” he asked in a soft and considerate voice.
“They said — —” gulped Baker, with a certain tenacity. “They said that they didn’t give a cuss whether your son was alive or dead.”
There was a silence for the space of three seconds. Baker stood like an image; he had no machinery for balancing the issues of this kind of a situation, and he seemed to feel that if he stood as still as a stone frog he would escape the ravages of a terrible Senatorial wrath which was about to break forth in a hurricane speech which would snap off trees and sweep away barns.
“Well,” drawled the Senator lazily, “who did you see, Baker?”
The private secretary resumed a certain usual manner of breathing. He told the names of the men whom he had seen.
“Ye — e — es,” remarked the Senator. He took another little brown cigar and held it with a thumb and first finger, staring at it with the calm and steady scrutiny of a scientist investigating a new thing. “So they don’t care whether Caspar is alive or dead, eh? Well … maybe they don’t…. That’s all right…. However … I think I’ll just look in on ’em and state my views.”
When the Senator had gone, the private secretary ran to the window and leaned afar out. Pennsylvania Avenue was gleaming silver blue in the light of many arc-lamps; the cable trains groaned along to the clangour of gongs; from the window, the walks presented a hardly diversified aspect of shirt-waists and straw hats. Sometimes a newsboy screeched.
Baker watched the tall, heavy figure of the Senator moving out to intercept a cable train. “Great Scott!” cried the private secretary to himself, “there’ll be three distinct kinds of grand, plain practical fireworks. The old man is going for ‘em. I wouldn’t be in Lascum’s boots. Ye gods, what a row there’ll be.”
In due time the Senator was closeted with some kind of deputy third-assistant battery-horse in the offices of the War Department. The official obviously had been told off to make a supreme effort to pacify Cadogan, and he certainly was acting according to his instructions. He was almost in tears; he spread out his hands in supplication, and his voice whined and wheedled.
“Why, really, you know, Senator, we can only beg you to look at the circumstances. Two scant divisions at the top of that hill; over a thousand men killed and wounded; the line so thin that any strong attack would smash our Army to flinders. The Spaniards have probably received reenforcements under Pando; Shafter seems to be too ill to be actively in command of our troops; Lawton can’t get up with his division before to-morrow. We are actually expecting … no, I won’t say expecting … but we would not be surprised … nobody in the department would be surprised if before daybreak we were compelled to give to the country the news of a disaster which would be the worst blow the National pride has ever suffered. Don’t you see? Can’t you see our position, Senator?”
The Senator, with a pale but composed face, contemplated the official with eyes that gleamed in a way not usual with the big, self-controlled politician.
“I’ll tell you frankly, sir,” continued the other. “I’ll tell you frankly, that at this moment we don’t know whether we are a-foot or a-horseback. Everything is in the air. We don’t know whether we have won a glorious victory or simply got ourselves in a deuce of a fix.”
The Senator coughed. “I suppose my boy is with the two divisions at the top of that hill? He’s with Reilly.”
“Yes; Reilly’s brigade is up there.”
“And when do you suppose the War Department can tell me if he is all right. I want to know.”
“My dear Senator, frankly, I don’t know. Again I beg you to think of our position. The Army is in a muddle; it’s a General thinking that he must fall back, and yet not sure that he can fall back without losing the Army. Why, we’re worrying about the lives of sixteen thousand men and the self-respect of the nation, Senator.”
“I see,” observed the Senator, nodding his head slowly. “And naturally the welfare of one man’s son doesn’t — how do they say it — doesn’t cut any ice.”
V
And in Cuba it rained. In a few days Reilly’s brigade discovered that by their successful charge they had gained the inestimable privilege of sitting in a wet trench and slowly but surely starving to death. Men’s tempers crumbled like dry bread. The soldiers who so cheerfully, quietly and decently had captured positions which the foreign experts had said were impregnable, now in turn underwent an attack which was furious as well as insidious. The heat of the sun alternated with rains which boomed and roared in their falling like mountain cataracts. It seemed as if men took the fever through sheer lack of other occupation. During the days of battle none had had time to get even a tropic headache, but no sooner was that brisk period over than men began to shiver and shudder by squads and platoons. Rations were scarce enough to make a little fat strip of bacon seem of the size of a corner lot, and coffee grains were pearls. There would have been godless quarreling over fragments if it were not that with these fevers came a great listlessness, so that men were almost content to die, if death required no exertion.
It was an occasion which distinctly separated the sheep from the goats. The goats were few enough, but their qualities glared out like crimson spots.
One morning Jameson and Ripley, two Captains in the Forty-fourth Foot, lay under a flimsy shelter of sticks and palm branches. Their dreamy, dull eyes contemplated the men in the trench which went to left and right. To them came Caspar Cadogan, moaning. “By Jove,” he said, as he flung himself wearily on the ground, “I can’t stand much more of this, you know. It’s killing me.” A bristly beard sprouted through the grime on his face; his eyelids were crimson; an indescribably dirty shirt fell away from his roughened neck; and at the same time various lines of evil and greed were deepened on his face, until he practically stood forth as a revelation, a confession. “I can’t stand it. By Jove, I can’t.”
Stanford, a Lieutenant under Jameson, came stumbling along toward them. He was a lad of the class of ‘98 at West Point. It could be seen that he was flaming with fever. He rolled a calm eye at them. “Have you any water, sir?” he said to his Captain. Jameson got upon his feet and helped Stanford to lay his shaking length under the shelter. “No, boy,” he answered gloomily. “Not a drop. You got any,
Rip?”
“No,” answered Ripley, looking with anxiety upon the young officer. “Not a drop.”
“You, Cadogan?”
Here Caspar hesitated oddly for a second, and then in a tone of deep regret made answer, “No, Captain; not a mouthful.”
Jameson moved off weakly. “You lay quietly, Stanford, and I’ll see what I can rustle.”
Presently Caspar felt that Ripley was steadily regarding him. He returned the look with one of half-guilty questioning.
“God forgive you, Cadogan,” said Ripley, “but you are a damned beast. Your canteen is full of water.”
Even then the apathy in their veins prevented the scene from becoming as sharp as the words sounded. Caspar sputtered like a child, and at length merely said: “No, it isn’t.” Stanford lifted his head to shoot a keen, proud glance at Caspar, and then turned away his face.
“You lie,” said Ripley. “I can tell the sound of a full canteen as far as I can hear it.”
“Well, if it is, I — I must have forgotten it.”
“You lie; no man in this Army just now forgets whether his canteen is full or empty. Hand it over.”
Fever is the physical counterpart of shame, and when a man has the one he accepts the other with an ease which would revolt his healthy self. However, Caspar made a desperate struggle to preserve the forms. He arose and taking the string from his shoulder, passed the canteen to Ripley. But after all there was a whine in his voice, and the assumption of dignity was really a farce. “I think I had better go, Captain. You can have the water if you want it, I’m sure. But — but I fail to see — I fail to see what reason you have for insulting me.”
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 158