e of the green
grass was bold and clear. He thought that he was aware of every change
in the thin, transparent vapor that floated idly in sheets. The brown
or gray trunks of the trees showed each roughness of their surfaces.
And the men of the regiment, with their starting eyes and sweating
faces, running madly, or falling, as if thrown headlong, to queer,
heaped-up corpses--all were comprehended. His mind took a mechanical
but firm impression, so that afterward everything was pictured and
explained to him, save why he himself was there.

But there was a frenzy made from this furious rush. The men, pitching
forward insanely, had burst into cheerings, moblike and barbaric, but
tuned in strange keys that can arouse the dullard and the stoic. It
made a mad enthusiasm that, it seemed, would be incapable of checking
itself before granite and brass. There was the delirium that
encounters despair and death, and is heedless and blind to the odds.
It is a temporary but sublime absence of selfishness. And because it
was of this order was the reason, perhaps, why the youth wondered,
afterward, what reasons he could have had for being there.

Presently the straining pace ate up the energies of the men. As if by
agreement, the leaders began to slacken their speed. The volleys
directed against them had had a seeming windlike effect. The regiment
snorted and blew. Among some stolid trees it began to falter and
hesitate. The men, staring intently, began to wait for some of the
distant walls to smoke to move and disclose to them the scene. Since
much of their strength and their breath had vanished, they returned to
caution. They were become men again.

The youth had a vague belief that he had run miles, and he thought, in
a way, that he was now in some new and unknown land.

The moment the regiment ceased its advance the protesting splutter of
musketry became a steadied roar. Long and accurate fringes of smoke
spread out. From the top of a small hill came level belchings of
yellow flame that caused an inhuman whistling in the air.

The men, halted, had opportunity to see some of their comrades dropping
with moans and shrieks. A few lay under foot, still or wailing. And
now for an instant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands,
and watched the regiment dwindle. They appeared dazed and stupid.
This spectacle seemed to paralyze them, overcome them with a fatal
fascination. They stared woodenly at the sigh