The Red Badge of Courage and Other Stories

by Stephen Crane

  “Now, boys,” said the captain, “she is going to swamp sure. All we can do is to work her in as far as possible, and then when she swamps, pile out and scramble for the beach. Keep cool now, and don’t jump until she swamps sure.”

  The oiler took the oars. Over his shoulders he scanned the surf. “Captain,” he said, “I think I’d better bring her about, and keep her head-on to the seas, and back her in.”

  “All right, Billie,” said the captain. “Back her in.” The oiler swung the boat then, and, seated in the stern, the cook and the correspondent were obliged to look over their shoulders to contemplate the lonely and indifferent shore.

  The monstrous inshore rollers heaved the boat high until the men were again enabled to see the white sheets of water scudding up the slanted beach. “We won’t get in very close,” said the captain. Each time a man could wrest his attention from the rollers, he turned his glance toward the shore, and in the expression of the eyes during this contemplation there was a singular quality. The correspondent, observing the others, knew that they were not afraid, but the full meaning of their glances was shrouded.

  As for himself, he was too tired to grapple fundamentally with the fact. He tried to coerce his mind into thinking of it, but the mind was dominated at this time by the muscles, and the muscles said they did not care. It merely occurred to him that if he should drown it would be a shame.

  There were no hurried words, no pallor, no plain agitation. The men simply looked at the shore. “Now, remember to get well clear of the boat when you jump,” said the captain.

  Seaward the crest of a roller suddenly fell with a thunderous crash, and the long white comber came roaring down upon the boat.

  “Steady now,” said the captain. The men were silent. They turned their eyes from the shore to the comber and waited. The boat slid up the incline, leaped at the furious top, bounced over it, and swung down the long back of the wave. Some water had been shipped, and the cook bailed it out.

  But the next crest crashed also. The tumbling, boiling flood of white water caught the boat and whirled it almost perpendicular. Water swarmed in from all sides. The correspondent had his hands on the gunwale at this time, and when the water entered at that place he swiftly withdrew his fingers, as if he objected to wetting them.

  The little boat, drunken with this weight of water, reeled and snuggled deeper into the sea.

  “Bail her out, cook! Bail her out!” said the captain.

  “All right, Captain,” said the cook.

  “Now, boys, the next one will do for us sure,” said the oiler. “Mind to jump clear of the boat.”

  The third wave moved forward, hung, furious, implacable. It fairly swallowed the dinghy, and almost simultaneously the men tumbled into the sea. A piece of life-belt had lain in the bottom of the boat, and as the correspondent went overboard he held this to his chest with his left hand.

  The January water was icy, and he reflected immediately that it was colder than he had expected to find it off the coast of Florida. This appeared to his dazed mind as a fact important enough to be noted at the time. The coldness of the water was sad; it was tragic. This fact was somehow mixed and confused with his opinion of his own situation so that it seemed almost a proper reason for tears. The water was cold.

  When he came to the surface he was conscious of little but the noisy water. Afterward he saw his companions in the sea. The oiler was ahead in the race. He was swimming strongly and rapidly. Off to the correspondent’s left, the cook’s great white and corked back bulged out of the water; and in the rear the captain was hanging with his one good hand to the keel of the overturned dinghy.

  There is a certain immovable quality to a shore, and the correspondent wondered at it amid the confusion of the sea.

  It seemed also very attractive; but the correspondent knew that it was a long journey, and he paddled leisurely. The piece of life-preserver lay under him, and sometimes he whirled down the incline of a wave as if he were on a hand-sled.

  But finally he arrived at a place in the sea where travel was beset with difficulty. He did not pause swimming to inquire what manner of current had caught him, but there his progress ceased. The shore was set before him like a bit of scenery on a stage, and he looked at it, and understood with his eyes each detail of it.

  As the cook passed, much farther to the left, the captain was calling to him, “Turn over on your back, cook! Turn over on your back and use the oar.”

  “All right, sir.” The cook turned on his back, and, paddling with an oar, went ahead as if he were a canoe.

  Presently the boat also passed to the left of the correspondent, with the captain clinging with one hand to the keel. He would have appeared like a man raising himself to look over a board fence if it were not for the extraordinary gymnastics of the boat. The correspondent marveled that the captain could still hold to it.

  They passed on nearer to shore,—the oiler, the cook, the captain, —and following them went the water-jar, bouncing gaily over the seas.

  The correspondent remained in the grip of this strange new enemy, a current. The shore, with its white slope of sand and its green bluff, topped with little silent cottages, was spread like a picture before him. It was very near to him then, but he was impressed as one who, in a gallery, looks at a scene from Brittany or Algiers.

  He thought: “I am going to drown? Can it be possible? Can it be possible? Can it be possible?” Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.

  But later a wave perhaps whirled him out of this small deadly current, for he found suddenly that he could again make progress toward the shore. Later still he was aware that the captain, clinging with one hand to the keel of the dinghy, had his face turned away from the shore and toward him, and was calling his name. “Come to the boat! Come to the boat!”

  In his struggle to reach the captain and the boat, he reflected that when one gets properly wearied drowning must really be a comfortable arrangement—a cessation of hostilities accompanied by a large degree of relief; and he was glad of it, for the main thing in his mind for some moments had been horror of the temporary agony; he did not wish to be hurt.

  Presently he saw a man running along the shore. He was undressing with most remarkable speed. Coat, trousers, shirt, everything flew magically off him.

  “Come to the boat!” called the captain.

  “All right, Captain.” As the correspondent paddled, he saw the captain let himself down to bottom and leave the boat. Then the correspondent performed his one little marvel of the voyage. A large wave caught him and flung him with ease and supreme speed completely over the boat and far beyond it. It struck him even then as an event in gymnastics and a true miracle of the sea. An overturned boat in the surf is not a plaything to a swimming man.

  The correspondent arrived in water that reached only to his waist, but his condition did not enable him to stand for more than a moment. Each wave knocked him into a heap, and the undertow pulled at him.

  Then he saw the man who had been running and undressing, and undressing and running, come bounding into the water. He dragged ashore the cook, and then waded toward the captain; but the captain waved him away and sent him to the correspondent. He was naked—naked as a tree in winter; but a halo was about his head, and he shone like a saint. He gave a strong pull, and a long drag, and a bully heave at the correspondent’s hand. The correspondent, schooled in the minor formula, said, “Thanks, old man.” But suddenly the man cried, “What’s that?” He pointed a swift finger. The correspondent said, “Go.”

  In the shallows, face downward, lay the oiler. His forehead touched sand that was periodically, between each wave, clear of the sea.

  The correspondent did not know all that transpired afterward. When he achieved safe ground he fell, striking the sand with each particular part of his body. It was as if he had dropped from a roof, but the thud was grateful to him.

  It seems that instantly the beach was populated
with men with blankets, clothes, and flasks, and women with coffee-pots and all the remedies sacred to their minds. The welcome of the land to the men from the sea was warm and generous; but a still and dripping shape was carried slowly up the beach, and the land’s welcome for it could only be the different and sinister hospitality of the grave.

  When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea’s voice to the men on shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters.

  SELECTED POETRY

  In the desert

  I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

  Who, squatting upon the ground,

  Held his heart in his hands,

  And ate of it.

  I said, “Is it good, friend?”

  “It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

  “But I like it

  “Because it is bitter,

  “And because it is my heart.”

  God fashioned the ship of the world carefully.

  With the infinite skill of an all-master

  Made He the hull and the sails,

  Held He the rudder

  Ready for adjustment.

  Erect stood He, scanning His work proudly.

  Then—at fateful time—a wrong called,

  And God turned, heeding.

  Lo, the ship, at this opportunity, slipped slyly,

  Making cunning noiseless travel down the ways.

  So that, forever rudderless, it went upon the seas

  Going ridiculous voyages,

  Making quaint progress,

  Turning as with serious purpose

  Before stupid winds.

  And there were many in the sky

  Who laughed at this thing.

  I saw a man pursuing the horizon;

  Round and round they sped.

  I was disturbed at this;

  I accosted the man.

  “It is futile,” I said,

  “You can never—”

  “You lie,” he cried,

  And ran on.

  Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.

  Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky

  And the affrighted steed ran on alone,

  Do not weep.

  War is kind.

  Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment

  Little souls who thirst for fight,

  These men were born to drill and die

  The unexplained glory flies above them

  Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom—

  A field where a thousand corpses lie.

  Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.

  Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,

  Raged at his breast, gulped and died,

  Do not weep.

  War is kind.

  Swift, blazing flag of the regiment

  Eagle with crest of red and gold,

  These men were born to drill and die

  Point for them the virtue of slaughter

  Make plain to them the excellence of killing

  And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

  Mother whose heart hung humble as a button

  On the bright splendid shroud of your son,

  Do not weep.

  War is kind.

  A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices

  Which, bawled by boys from mile to mile,

  Spreads its curious opinion

  To a million merciful and sneering men,

  While families cuddle the joys of the fireside

  When spurred by tale of dire lone agony.

  A newspaper is a court

  Where every one is kindly and unfairly tried

  By a squalor of honest men.

  A newspaper is a market

  Where wisdom sells its freedom

  And melons are crowned by the crowd.

  A newspaper is a game

  Where his error scores the player victory

  While another’s skill wins death.

  A newspaper is a symbol;

  It is fetless life’s chronicle,

  A collection of loud tales

  Concentrating eternal stupidities,

  That in remote ages lived unhaltered,

  Roaming through a fenceless world.

  The trees in the garden rained flowers.

  Children ran there joyously.

  They gathered the flowers

  Each to himself.

  Now there were some

  Who gathered great heaps—

  —Having opportunity and skill—

  Until, behold, only chance blossoms

  Remained for the feeble.

  Then a little spindling tutor

  Ran importantly to the father, crying:

  “Pray, come hither!

  “See this unjust thing in your garden!”

  But when the father had surveyed,

  He admonished the tutor:

  “Not so, small sage!

  “This thing is just.

  “For, look you,

  “Are not they who possess the flowers

  “Stronger, bolder, shrewder

  “Than they who have none?

  “Why should the strong—

  “—The beautiful strong—

  “Why should they not have the flowers?”

  Upon reflection, the tutor bowed to the ground.

  “My Lord,” he said,

  “The stars are displaced

  “By this towering wisdom.”

  Explanatory Notes

  NOTES ON THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE

  Chapter I

  1 . board floor: The corporal has installed a semi-permanent wood floor in his tent.

  2 . “returning with his shield or on it”: The admonition given to classical Greek soldiers.

  3 . Washington: The national capital, also the site where Union soldiers were often deployed to the field.

  4 . Hun: One of the barbaric races that invaded Europe in the fifth century, whose leaders included Attila (c. 406-453).

  5 . fresh fish: New initiates or recruits.

  6 . Richmond, Virginia: Capital of the Confederate States of America.

  7 . Johnnies: “Johnnie Rebs” or Confederate soldiers.

  Chapter II

  1 . Napolean Bonaparte (1769-1821), general and ruler of France.

  Chapter III

  1 . haversack: A shoulder bag for a soldier’s rations.

  2 . A brigade normally consisted of two or more regiments.

  3 . cracker or hardtack: A large, hard-baked biscuit given to soldiers for rations.

  Chapter IV

  1 . bushwacker: Guerilla fighter

  2 . banshee: A fairy whose wailing foretells death.

  Chapter VIII

  1 . A parody of a nursery rhyme (“Five and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie”).

  Chapter IX

  1 . phillipic: A passionate speech filled with anger.

  2 . wafer: According to the discredited Christian-allegorical reading of the novel, the “sun” = the “Son” or the resurrected Christ in the heavens like a communion wafer. Crane more likely borrowed the image from chapter 3 of Rudyard Kipling’s The Light That Failed (1899): “The sun shone, a blood-red wafer, on the water.” That is, Crane and Kipling compare the sun to a wafer of wax used to seal a letter.

  Chapter XII

  1 . Joseph Katz, The Portable Stephen Crane (New York: Viking, 1969), p. 257: “The Plank road, a continuation of the United States Ford road to the southeast of Chancellorsville, was one of three available routes between Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg.”

  Chapter XIV

  1 . “asleep for a thousand years”: According to Revelations 20:2, Satan was to be bound for a thousand years or a millennium at the second coming of Christ.

  Chapter XVI

  1 . “All quiet on the Rappahannock”: Katz, p. 276: “In his description of life in the Union encampment during the winter, Confederate Col. John S. Mosb
y (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, III, 149) recorded the reference on which Henry’s joke would have depended: ‘The troops had been having an easy, lazy life, which was described in the stereotyped message sent every night to the Northern press, “All quiet along the Potomac.” ’ ”

  2 . chin music: Excessive talking or babbling.

  Chapter XVII

  1 . A popular folk saying, it also appears in Toilers in London (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1889), pp. 17-18.

  Chapter XVIII

  1 . cowboy: In its original, derogatory sense, a reckless, rough, and wild herder of cattle.

  Chapter XXI

  1 . elfin thoughts: Fantasies.

  Chapter XXII

  1 . gluttering: Also in the manuscript. Apparently a corruption of “guttering,” the dripping of a candle.

  Chapter XXIV

  1 . “hot plowshares”: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares” (Isaiah 2:4).

  NOTES ON “THE VETERAN”

  1 . “whites of their eyes”: In order to conserve gunpowder, the Revolutionary commanders at the Battle of Bunker Hill on 16 June 1775 instructed their soldiers confronting the Tories not to fire “until you see the whites of their eyes.”

  2 . Chancellorsville: “Lee’s greatest victory,” a battle fought 1-4 May 1863 some twelve miles west of Fredericksburg in northern Virginia.

  3 . genie: A spirit ostensibly under the control of Solomon.