wicked公司An Episode of War
Stephendomina Crane
The lieutenant's rubber blanket lay on the ground, and upon it he had poured the company's supply of coffee. Corporals and other reprentatives of the grimy and hot-throated men who lined the breastwork had come for each squad's portion.
The lieutenant was frowning and rious at this task of division. His lips purd as he drew with his sword various crevices in the heap until brown squares of coffee, astoundingly equal in size, appeared on the blanket. He was on the verge of a great triumph in mathematics, and the masood azharcorporals were thronging forward, each to reap a little square, when suddenly the lieutenant cried out and looked quickly at a man near him as if he suspected it was a ca of personal assault. The others cried out also when they saw blood upon the lieutenant's sleeve. He had winced like a man stung, swayed dangerously, and thenstart here straightened. The sound of his hoar breathing was plainly audible. He looked sadly, mystically, over the breastwork at the green face of a wood, where now were many little puff
s of white smoke. During this moment the men about him gazed statue-like and silent, astonished and awed by this catastrophe which happened when catastrophes were not expected--when they had leisure to obrve it.
As the lieutenant stared at the wood, they too swung their heads, so that for another instant all hands, still silent, contemplated the distant forest as if their minds were fixed upon the mystery of a bullet's journey.
The officer had, of cour, been compelled to take his sword into his left hand. He did not hold it by the hilt. He gripped it at the middle of the blade, awkwardly. Turning his eyes from the hostile wood, he looked at the sword as he held it there, and emed puzzled as to what to do with it, where to put it. In short, this weapon had of a sudden become a strange thing to him. He looked at it in a kind of stupefaction, as if he had been endowed with a trident, a sceptre, or a spade.
Finally he tried to sheath it. To sheath a sword held by the left hand, at the middle of the blade, in a scabbard hung at the left hip, is a feat worthy of a sawdust ring. This wounded
officer engaged in a desperate struggle with the sword and the wobbling scabbard, and during the time of it he breathed like a wrestler.
But at this instant the men, the spectators, awoke from their stone-like pos and crowded forward sympathetically. The orderly-rgeant took the sword and tenderly placed it in the scabbard. At the time, he leaned nervously backward, and did not allow even his finger to brush the body of the lieutenant. A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it.
Well men shy from this new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all ikerexistence--the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyes thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a finger upon him might nd him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at once into the dim, grey unknown. And so the orderly-rgeant, while sheathing the sword, leaned nervously backward.
There were others who proffered assistance. One timidly prented his shoulder and asked the lieutenant if he cared to lean upon it, but the latter waved him away mournfully. He wore the look of one who knows he is the victim of a terrible dia and understands his helplessness. He sd是什么意思again stared over the breastwork at the forest, and then turning went slowly rearward. He held his right wrist tenderly in his left hand as if 初旬的意思the wounded arm was made of very brittle glass.
And the men in silence stared at the wood, then at the departing7一12岁手工科技小制作 lieutenant--then at the wood, then at the lieutenant.
As the wounded officer pasd from the line of battle, he was enabled to e many things which as a participant in the fight were unknown to him. He saw a general on a black hor gazing over the lines of blue infantry at the green woods which veiled his problems. An aide galloped furiously, dragged his hor suddenly to a halt, saluted, and prented fuck offa paper. It was, for a wonder, precily like an historical painting.
To the rear of the general and his staff a group, compod of a bugler, two or three orderli
es, and the bearer of the corps standard, all upon maniacal hors, were working like slaves to hold their ground, prerve, their respectful interval, while the shells boomed in the air about them, and caud their chargers to make furious quivering leaps.
A battery, a tumultuous and shining mass, was swirling toward the right. The wild thud of hoofs, the cries of the riders shouting blame and谈心疗法 prai, menace and encouragement, and, last the roar of the wheels, the slant of the glistening guns, brought the lieutenant to an intent pau.
The battery swept in curves that stirred the heart; it made halts as dramatic as the crash of a wave on the rocks, and when it fled onward, this aggregation of wheels, levers, motors, had a beautiful unity, as if it were a missile. The sound of it was a war-chorus that reached into the depths of man's emotion.
