For a time he thought that the field below was the field of Waterloo. He remembered seeing, while it was yet light, a farmhouse, a distant cluster of buildings with a frightened air. “La Belle Alliance,” he thought, “or Hougomont—which?—These Belgians planted a lot of wheat, and now there are red poppies all through it.—Where is Ney and his cavalry?—No, Stuart and his cavalry—” His mind righted for a moment. “This is a long battle, and a long night. Come, Death! Come, Death!” The shadowy line of boulders became a line of Deaths, tall, draped figures bearing scythes. Three Deaths, then a giant hour-glass, then three Deaths, then the hour-glass. He stared, fascinated. “Which scythe? The one that starts out of line—now if I can keep them still in line—just so long will I live!” He stared for a while, till the Deaths became boulders again and his fingers fell to playing with the thickening blood on the ground beside him. A meteor pierced the night—a white fire-ball thrown from the ramparts of the sky. He seemed to be rushing with it, rushing, rushing, rushing,—a rushing river. There was a heavy sound. As his head sank back he saw again the line of Deaths, and the one that left the line.
Below, through the night, the wind that blew over the wheat-fields and the meadows, the orchards and the woods, was a moaning wind. It was a wind with a human voice.
Dawn came, but the guns smeared her translucence with black. The sun rose, but the ravens’ wings hid him. Dull red and sickly copper was this day, hidden and smothered by dark wreaths. Many things happened in it, variation and change that cast a tendril toward the future.
Day drove on; sultry and loud and smoky. A squad of soldiers in a fence corner, waiting for the order forward, exchanged opinions. “Three days. We’re going to fight forever—and ever—and ever.”—“You may be. I ain’t. I’m going to fight through to where there’s peace—” “‘Peace!’ How do you spell it?”—“‘They cry Peace! Peace! and there is no Peace!’”—“D’ye reckon if one of us took a bucket and went over to that spring there, he’d be shot?”—“Of course he would! Besides, where’s the bucket?”—“I’ve got a canteen.”—“I’ve got a cup—” “Say, Sergeant, can we go?”—“No. You’ll be killed.”—“I’d just as soon be killed as to perish of thirst! Besides, a shell’ll come plumping down directly and kill us anyhow.”—“Talk of something pleasant.”—“Jim’s caught a grasshopper! Poor little hoppergrass, you oughtn’t to be out here in this wide and wicked world! Let him go, Jim.”—“How many killed and wounded do you reckon there are?”—“Thirty thousand of us, and sixty thousand of them.”—“I wish that smoke would lift so’s we could see something!”—“Look out! Look out! Get out of this!”
Two men crawled away from the crater made by the shell. A heavy tussock of grass in their path stopped them. One rose to his knees, the other, who was wounded, took the posture of the dying Gaul in the Capitoline. “Who are you?” said the one.—“I am Jim Dudley. Who are you?”—“I—I didn’t know you, Jim. I’m Randolph.—Well, we’re all that’s left.”
The dead horses lay upon this field one and two and three days in the furnace heat. They were fearful to see and there came from them a fetid odour. But the scream of the wounded horses was worse than the sight of the dead. There were many wounded horses. They lay in wood and field, in country lane and orchard. No man tended them, and they knew not what it was all about. To and fro and from side to side of the vast, cloud-wreathed Mars’s Shield galloped the riderless horses.
At one of the clock all the guns, blue and grey, opened in a cannonade that shook the leaves of distant trees. A smoke as of Vesuvius or Ætna, sulphurous, pungent, clothed the region of battle. The air reverberated and the hills trembled. The roar was like the roar of the greatest cataract of a larger world, like the voice of a storm sent by the King of all the Genii. Amid its deep utterance the shout even of many men could not be heard.
Out from the ranks of the fortress’s defenders rushed a grey, world-famous charge. It was a division charging—three brigades en échelon,—five thousand men, led by a man with long auburn locks. Down a hill, across a rolling open, up an opposite slope,—half a mile in all, perhaps,—lay their road. Mars and Bellona may be figured in the air above it. It was a spectacle, that charge, fit to draw the fierce eyes and warm the gloomy souls of all the warrior deities. Woden may have watched and the Aztec god. The blue artillery crowned that opposite slope, and other slopes. The blue artillery swung every muzzle; it spat death upon the five thousand. The five thousand went steadily, grey and cool and clear, the vivid flag above them. A light was on their bayonets—the three lines of bayonets—the three brigades, Garnett and Kemper and Armistead. A light was in the eyes of the men; they saw the fortress above the battle clouds; they saw their homes, and the watchers upon the ramparts. They went steadily, to the eyes of history in a curious, unearthly light, the light of a turn in human affairs, the light of catastrophe, the light of an ending and a beginning.
When they came into the open between the two heights, the massed blue infantry turned every rifle against them. There poured a leaden rain of death. Here, too, the three lines met an enfilading fire from the batteries on Round Top. Death howled and threw himself against the five thousand; in the air above might be heard the Valkyries calling. There were not now five thousand, there were not now four thousand. There was a clump of trees seen like spectres through the smoke. It rose from the slope which was the grey goal, from the slope peopled by Federal batteries, with a great Federal infantry support at hand. Toward this slope, up this slope, went Pickett’s charge.
Garnett fell dead. Kemper and Trimble were desperately wounded. Save Pickett himself, all mounted officers were down. The men fell—the men fell; Death swung a fearful scythe. There were not now four thousand, there were not now three thousand. And still the vivid flag went on; and still, high, thrilling, clear and dauntless, rose from Pickett’s charge the “rebel yell.”