Complete Works of Stephen Crane

by Stephen Crane

  Shackles asked a question of a man accidentally: “Where’s that regiment going to?” He pointed to the force that was crawling up the hill. The man grinned, and said, “They’re going to look for a fight!”

  “Looking for a fight!” said Shackles and Little Nell together. They stared into each other’s eyes. Then they set off for the foot of the hill. The hill was long and toilsome. Below them spread wider and wider a vista of ships quiet on a grey sea; a busy, black disembarkation-place; tall, still, green hills; a village of well separated cottages; palms; a bit of road; soldiers marching. They passed vacant Spanish trenches; little twelve-foot blockhouses. Soon they were on a fine upland near the sea. The path, under ordinary conditions, must have been a beautiful wooded way. It wound in the shade of thickets of fine trees, then through rank growths of bushes with revealed and fantastic roots, then through a grassy space which had all the beauty of a neglected orchard. But always from under their feet scuttled noisy land-crabs, demons to the nerves, which in some way possessed a semblance of moon-like faces upon their blue or red bodies, and these faces were turned with expressions of deepest horror upon Shackles and Little Nell as they sped to overtake the pugnacious regiment. The route was paved with coats, hats, tent and blanket rolls, ration-tins, haversacks — everything but ammunition belts, rifles and canteens.

  They heard a dull noise of voices in front of them — men talking too loud for the etiquette of the forest — and presently they came upon two or three soldiers lying by the roadside, flame-faced, utterly spent from the hurried march in the heat. One man came limping back along the path. He looked to them anxiously for sympathy and comprehension. “Hurt m’ knee. I swear I couldn’t keep up with th’ boys. I had to leave ‘m. Wasn’t that tough luck?” His collar rolled away from a red, muscular neck, and his bare forearms were better than stanchions. Yet he was almost babyishly tearful in his attempt to make the two correspondents feel that he had not turned back because he was afraid. They gave him scant courtesy, tinctured with one drop of sympathetic yet cynical understanding. Soon they overtook the hospital squad; men addressing chaste language to some pack-mules; a talkative sergeant; two amiable, cool-eyed young surgeons. Soon they were amid the rear troops of the dismounted volunteer cavalry regiment which was moving to attack. The men strode easily along, arguing one to another on ulterior matters. If they were going into battle, they either did not know it or they concealed it well. They were more like men going into a bar at one o’clock in the morning. Their laughter rang through the Cuban woods. And in the meantime, soft, mellow, sweet, sang the voice of the Cuban wood-dove, the Spanish guerilla calling to his mate — forest music; on the flanks, deep back on both flanks, the adorable wood-dove, singing only of love. Some of the advancing Americans said it was beautiful. It was beautiful. The Spanish guerilla calling to his mate. What could be more beautiful?

  Shackles and Little Nell rushed precariously through waist-high bushes until they reached the centre of the single-filed regiment. The firing then broke out in front. All the woods set up a hot sputtering; the bullets sped along the path and across it from both sides. The thickets presented nothing but dense masses of light green foliage, out of which these swift steel things were born supernaturally.

  It was a volunteer regiment going into its first action, against an enemy of unknown force, in a country where the vegetation was thicker than fur on a cat. There might have been a dreadful mess; but in military matters the only way to deal with a situation of this kind is to take it frankly by the throat and squeeze it to death. Shackles and Little Nell felt the thrill of the orders. “Come ahead, men! Keep right ahead, men! Come on!” The volunteer cavalry regiment, with all the willingness in the world, went ahead into the angle of V-shaped Spanish formation.

  It seemed that every leaf had turned into a soda-bottle and was popping its cork. Some of the explosions seemed to be against the men’s very faces, others against the backs of their necks. “Now, men! Keep goin’ ahead. Keep on goin’.” The forward troops were already engaged. They, at least, had something at which to shoot. “Now, captain, if you’re ready.” “Stop that swearing there.” “Got a match?” “Steady, now, men.”

  A gate appeared in a barbed-wire fence. Within were billowy fields of long grass, dotted with palms and luxuriant mango trees. It was Elysian — a place for lovers, fair as Eden in its radiance of sun, under its blue sky. One might have expected to see white-robed figures walking slowly in the shadows. A dead man, with a bloody face, lay twisted in a curious contortion at the waist. Someone was shot in the leg, his pins knocked cleanly from under him.

  “Keep goin’, men.” The air roared, and the ground fled reelingly under their feet. Light, shadow, trees, grass. Bullets spat from every side. Once they were in a thicket, and the men, blanched and bewildered, turned one way, and then another, not knowing which way to turn. “Keep goin’, men.” Soon they were in the sunlight again. They could see the long scant line, which was being drained man by man — one might say drop by drop. The musketry rolled forth in great full measure from the magazine carbines. “Keep goin’, men.” “Christ, I’m shot!” “They’re flankin’ us, sir.” “We’re bein’ fired into by our own crowd, sir.” “Keep goin’, men.” A low ridge before them was a bottling establishment blowing up in detail. From the right — it seemed at that time to be the far right — they could hear steady, crashing volleys — the United States regulars in action.

  Then suddenly — to use a phrase of the street — the whole bottom of the thing fell out. It was suddenly and mysteriously ended. The Spaniards had run away, and some of the regulars were chasing them. It was a victory.

  When the wounded men dropped in the tall grass they quite disappeared, as if they had sunk in water. Little Nell and Shackles were walking along through the fields, disputing.

  “Well, damn it, man!” cried Shackles, “we must get a list of the killed and wounded.”

  “That is not nearly so important,” quoth little Nell, academically, “as to get the first account to New York of the first action of the army in Cuba.”

  They came upon Tailor, lying with a bared torso and a small red hole through his left lung. He was calm, but evidently out of temper. “Good God, Tailor!” they cried, dropping to their knees like two pagans; “are you hurt, old boy?”

  “Hurt?” he said gently. “No, ’tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but ’tis enough, d’you see? You understand, do you? Idiots!”

  Then he became very official. “Shackles, feel and see what’s under my leg. It’s a small stone, or a burr, or something. Don’t be clumsy now! Be careful! Be careful!” Then he said, angrily, “Oh, you didn’t find it at all. Damn it!”

  In reality there was nothing there, and so Shackles could not have removed it. “Sorry, old boy,” he said, meekly.

  “Well, you may observe that I can’t stay here more than a year,” said Tailor, with some oratory, “and the hospital people have their own work in hand. It behoves you, Nell, to fly to Siboney, arrest a despatch boat, get a cot and some other things, and some minions to carry me. If I get once down to the base I’m all right, but if I stay here I’m dead. Meantime Shackles can stay here and try to look as if he liked it.”

  There was no disobeying the man. Lying there with a little red hole in his left lung, he dominated them through his helplessness, and through their fear that if they angered him he would move and — bleed.

  “Well?” said Little Nell.

  “Yes,” said Shackles, nodding.

  Little Nell departed.

  “That blanket you lent me,” Tailor called after him, “is back there somewhere with Point.”

  Little Nell noted that many of the men who were wandering among the wounded seemed so spent with the toil and excitement of their first action that they could hardly drag one leg after the other. He found himself suddenly in the same condition, His face, his neck, even his mouth, felt dry as sun-baked bricks, and his legs were foreign to him. But he sw
ung desperately into his five-mile task. On the way he passed many things: bleeding men carried by comrades; others making their way grimly, with encrimsoned arms; then the little settlement of the hospital squad; men on the ground everywhere, many in the path; one young captain dying, with great gasps, his body pale blue, and glistening, like the inside of a rabbit’s skin. But the voice of the Cuban wood-dove, soft, mellow, sweet, singing only of love, was no longer heard from the wealth of foliage.

  Presently the hurrying correspondent met another regiment coming to assist — a line of a thousand men in single file through the jungle. “Well, how is it going, old man?” “How is it coming on?” “Are we doin’ ‘em?” Then, after an interval, came other regiments, moving out. He had to take to the bush to let these long lines pass him, and he was delayed, and had to flounder amid brambles. But at last, like a successful pilgrim, he arrived at the brow of the great hill overlooking Siboney. His practised eye scanned the fine broad brow of the sea with its clustering ships, but he saw thereon no Eclipse despatch boats. He zigzagged heavily down the hill, and arrived finally amid the dust and outcries of the base. He seemed to ask a thousand men if they had seen an Eclipse boat on the water, or an Eclipse correspondent on the shore. They all answered, “No.”

  He was like a poverty-stricken and unknown suppliant at a foreign Court. Even his plea got only ill-hearings. He had expected the news of the serious wounding of Tailor to appal the other correspondents, but they took it quite calmly. It was as if their sense of an impending great battle between two large armies had quite got them out of focus for these minor tragedies. Tailor was hurt — yes? They looked at Little Nell, dazed. How curious that Tailor should be almost the first — how very curious — yes. But, as far as arousing them to any enthusiasm of active pity, it seemed impossible. He was lying up there in the grass, was he? Too bad, too bad, too bad!

  Little Nell went alone and lay down in the sand with his back against a rock. Tailor was prostrate up there in the grass. Never mind. Nothing was to be done. The whole situation was too colossal. Then into his zone came Walkley the invincible.

  “Walkley!” yelled Little Nell. Walkley came quickly, and Little Nell lay weakly against his rock and talked. In thirty seconds Walkley understood everything, had hurled a drink of whisky into Little Nell, had admonished him to lie quiet, and had gone to organise and manipulate. When he returned he was a trifle dubious and backward. Behind him was a singular squad of volunteers from the Adolphus, carrying among them a wire-woven bed.

  “Look here, Nell!” said Walkley, in bashful accents; “I’ve collected a battalion here which is willing to go bring Tailor; but — they say — you — can’t you show them where he is?”

  “Yes,” said Little Nell, arising.

  When the party arrived at Siboney, and deposited Tailor in the best place, Walkley had found a house and stocked it with canned soups. Therein Shackles and Little Nell revelled for a time, and then rolled on the floor in their blankets. Little Nell tossed a great deal. “Oh, I’m so tired. Good God, I’m tired. I’m — tired.”

  In the morning a voice aroused them. It was a swollen, important, circus voice saying, “Where is Mr. Nell? I wish to see him immediately.”

  “Here I am, Rogers,” cried Little Nell.

  “Oh, Nell,” said Rogers, “here’s a despatch to me which I thought you had better read.”

  Little Nell took the despatch. It was: “Tell Nell can’t understand his inaction; tell him come home first steamer from Port Antonio, Jamaica.”

  THE REVENGE OF THE ADOLPHUS

  I

  “Stand by.”

  Shackles had come down from the bridge of the Adolphus and flung this command at three fellow-correspondents who in the galley were busy with pencils trying to write something exciting and interesting from four days quiet cruising. They looked up casually. “What for?” They did not intend to arouse for nothing. Ever since Shackles had heard the men of the navy directing each other to stand by for this thing and that thing, he had used the two words as his pet phrase and was continually telling his friends to stand by. Sometimes its portentous and emphatic reiteration became highly exasperating and men were apt to retort sharply. “Well, I am standing by, ain’t I?” On this occasion they detected that he was serious. “Well, what for?” they repeated. In his answer Shackles was reproachful as well as impressive. “Stand by? Stand by for a Spanish gunboat. A Spanish gunboat in chase! Stand by for two Spanish gunboats — both of them in chase!”

  The others looked at him for a brief space and were almost certain that they saw truth written upon his countenance. Whereupon they tumbled out of the galley and galloped up to the bridge. The cook with a mere inkling of tragedy was now out on deck bawling, “What’s the matter? What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” Aft, the grimy head of a stoker was thrust suddenly up through the deck, so to speak. The eyes flashed in a quick look astern and then the head vanished. The correspondents were scrambling on the bridge. “Where’s my glasses, damn it? Here — let me take a look. Are they Spaniards, Captain? Are you sure?”

  The skipper of the Adolphus was at the wheel. The pilot-house was so arranged that he could not see astern without hanging forth from one of the side windows, but apparently he had made early investigation. He did not reply at once. At sea, he never replied at once to questions. At the very first, Shackles had discovered the merits of this deliberate manner and had taken delight in it. He invariably detailed his talk with the captain to the other correspondents. “Look here. I’ve just been to see the skipper. I said ‘I would like to put into Cape Haytien.’ Then he took a little think. Finally he said: ‘All right.’ Then I said: ‘I suppose we’ll need to take on more coal there?’ He took another little think. I said: ‘Ever ran into that port before?’ He took another little think. Finally he said: ‘Yes.’ I said ‘Have a cigar?’ He took another little think. See? There’s where I fooled ‘im — —”

  While the correspondents spun the hurried questions at him, the captain of the Adolphus stood with his brown hands on the wheel and his cold glance aligned straight over the bow of his ship.

  “Are they Spanish gunboats, Captain? Are they, Captain?”

  After a profound pause, he said: “Yes.” The four correspondents hastily and in perfect time presented their backs to him and fastened their gaze on the pursuing foe. They saw a dull grey curve of sea going to the feet of the high green and blue coast-line of north-eastern Cuba, and on this sea were two miniature ships with clouds of iron-coloured smoke pouring from their funnels.

  One of the correspondents strolled elaborately to the pilot-house. “Aw — Captain,” he drawled, “do you think they can catch us?”

  The captain’s glance was still aligned over the bow of his ship. Ultimately he answered: “I don’t know.”

  From the top of the little Adolphus’ stack, thick dark smoke swept level for a few yards and then went rolling to leaward in great hot obscuring clouds. From time to time the grimy head was thrust through the deck, the eyes took the quick look astern and then the head vanished. The cook was trying to get somebody to listen to him. “Well, you know, damn it all, it won’t be no fun to be ketched by them Spaniards. Be-Gawd, it won’t. Look here, what do you think they’ll do to us, hey? Say, I don’t like this, you know. I’m damned if I do.” The sea, cut by the hurried bow of the Adolphus, flung its waters astern in the formation of a wide angle and the lines of the angle ruffled and hissed as they fled, while the thumping screw tormented the water at the stern. The frame of the steamer underwent regular convulsions as in the strenuous sobbing of a child.

  The mate was standing near the pilot-house. Without looking at him, the captain spoke his name. “Ed!”

  “Yes, sir,” cried the mate with alacrity.

  The captain reflected for a moment. Then he said: “Are they gainin’ on us?”

  The mate took another anxious survey of the race. “No — o — yes, I think they are — a little.”

  After a pau
se the captain said: “Tell the chief to shake her up more.”

  The mate, glad of an occupation in these tense minutes, flew down to the engine-room door. “Skipper says shake ‘er up more!” he bawled. The head of the chief engineer appeared, a grizzly head now wet with oil and sweat. “What?” he shouted angrily. It was as if he had been propelling the ship with his own arms. Now he was told that his best was not good enough. “What? shake ‘er up more? Why she can’t carry another pound, I tell you! Not another ounce! We — —” Suddenly he ran forward and climbed to the bridge. “Captain,” he cried in the loud harsh voice of one who lived usually amid the thunder of machinery, “she can’t do it, sir! Be-Gawd, she can’t! She’s turning over now faster than she ever did in her life and we’ll all blow to hell — —”

  The low-toned, impassive voice of the captain suddenly checked the chief’s clamour. “I’ll blow her up,” he said, “but I won’t git ketched if I kin help it.” Even then the listening correspondents found a second in which to marvel that the captain had actually explained his point of view to another human being.

  The engineer stood blank. Then suddenly he cried: “All right, sir!” He threw a hurried look of despair at the correspondents, the deck of the Adolphus, the pursuing enemy, Cuba, the sky and the sea; he vanished in the direction of his post.

  A correspondent was suddenly regifted with the power of prolonged speech. “Well, you see, the game is up, damn it. See? We can’t get out of it. The skipper will blow up the whole bunch before he’ll let his ship be taken, and the Spaniards are gaining. Well, that’s what comes from going to war in an eight-knot tub.” He bitterly accused himself, the others, and the dark, sightless, indifferent world.

  This certainty of coming evil affected each one differently. One was made garrulous; one kept absent-mindedly snapping his fingers and gazing at the sea; another stepped nervously to and fro, looking everywhere as if for employment for his mind. As for Shackles he was silent and smiling, but it was a new smile that caused the lines about his mouth to betray quivering weakness. And each man looked at the others to discover their degree of fear and did his best to conceal his own, holding his crackling nerves with all his strength.