and Schley's great victory, the fall of Santiago; freedom for Cuba, a
quieter sleep for the _Maine_ dead, and peace with Spain. Once more, as
he rose, he looked at the dark woods, the dead-haunted jungles which the
moon was draping with a more than mortal beauty, and he knew that in
them, as in the long grass of the orchard-like valley below him, comrade
was looking for dead comrade. And among the searchers was the faithful
Bob, looking for his Old Captain, Crittenden, his honest heart nigh to
bursting, for already he had found Raincrow torn with a shell and he had
borne a body back to the horror-haunted little hospital under the creek
bank at the Bloody Ford--a body from which the head hung over his
shoulder--limp, with a bullet-hole through the neck--the body of his
Young Captain, Basil.

XII

Grafton sat, sobered and saddened, where he was awhile. The moon swung
upward white and peaceful, toward mild-eyed stars. Crickets chirped in
the grass around him, and nature's low night-music started in the wood
and the valley below, as though the earth had never known the hell of
fire and human passion that had rocked it through that day. Was there so
much difference between the creatures of the earth and the creatures of
his own proud estate? Had they not both been on the same brute level
that day? And, save for the wounded and the men who had comrades wounded
and dead, were not the unharmed as careless, almost as indifferent as
cricket and tree-toad to the tragedies of their sphere? Had there been
any inner change in any man who had fought that day that was not for the
worse? Would he himself get normal again, he wondered? Was there one
sensitive soul who fully realized the horror of that day? If so, he
would better have been at home. The one fact that stood above every
thought that had come to him that day was the utter, the startling
insignificance of death. Could that mean much more than a startlingly
sudden lowering of the estimate put upon human life? Across the hollow
behind him and from a tall palm over the Spanish trenches, rose, loud
and clear, the night-song of a mocking-bird. Over there the little men
in blue were toiling, toiling, toiling at their trenches; and along the
crest of the hill the big men in blue were toiling, toiling, toiling at
theirs. All through the night anxious eyes would be strained for
Chaffee, and at dawn the slaughter would begin again. Wherever he
looked, he could see with his mind