The Open Boat and Other Stories
said--this is a favourite method for disposing of objectionable people.
The fat, green Mexican also thought that he was to be killed on the
run, from the miserable look he cast at the troops. Nevertheless, he
was allowed to vanish in a cloud of yellow dust at the ridge-top.
José was exultant, defiant, and, oh! bristling with courage. The black
horse was drooping sadly, his nose to the ground. Richardson's little
animal, with his ears bent forward, was staring at the horses of the
Rurales as if in an intense study. Richardson longed for speech, but
he could only bend forward and pat the shining, silken shoulders. The
little horse turned his head and looked back gravely.
DEATH AND THE CHILD
I
The peasants who were streaming down the mountain trail had in their
sharp terror evidently lost their ability to count. The cattle and
the huge round bundles seemed to suffice to the minds of the crowd
if there were now two in each case where there had been three. This
brown stream poured on with a constant wastage of goods and beasts.
A goat fell behind to scout the dried grass and its owner, howling,
flogging his donkeys, passed far ahead. A colt, suddenly frightened,
made a stumbling charge up the hill-side. The expenditure was always
profligate and always unnamed, unnoted. It was as if fear was a river,
and this horde had simply been caught in the torrent, man tumbling
over beast, beast over man, as helpless in it as the logs that fall
and shoulder grindingly through the gorges of a lumber country. It
was a freshet that might sear the face of the tall quiet mountain; it
might draw a livid line across the land, this downpour of fear with
a thousand homes adrift in the current--men, women, babes, animals.
From it there arose a constant babble of tongues, shrill, broken, and
sometimes choking as from men drowning. Many made gestures, painting
their agonies on the air with fingers that twirled swiftly.
The blue bay with its pointed ships and the white town lay below them,
distant, flat, serene. There was upon this vista a peace that a bird
knows when high in the air it surveys the world, a great calm thing
rolling noiselessly toward the end of the mystery. Here on the height
one felt the existence of the universe scornfully defining the pain
in ten thousand minds. The sky was an arch of stolid sapphire. Even
to the mountains raising their mighty shapes from the valley, this
headlong rush of the fugitives was too minute. The sea, the sky, and
the hills combined in their grandeur to term this misery inconsequent.
Then too it sometimes happened that a face seen as it passed on the
flood reflected curiously the spirit of them all and still more. One
saw then a woman of the opinion of the vaults above the clouds. When
a child cried it cried always because of some adjacent misfortune,
some discomfort of a pack-saddle or rudeness of an encircling arm. In
the dismal melody of this flight there were often sounding chords of
apathy. Into these preoccupied countenances, one felt that needles
could be thrust without purchasing a scream. The trail wound here and
there as the sheep had willed in the making of it.
Although this throng seemed to prove that the whole of humanity was
fleeing in one direction--with every tie severed that binds us to the
soil--a young man was walking rapidly up the mountain, hastening to
a side of the path from time to time to avoid some particularly wide
rush of people and cattle. He looked at everything in agitation and
pity. Frequently he called admonitions to maniacal fugitives, and at
other moments he exchanged strange stares with the imperturbable ones.
They seemed to him to wear merely the expressions of so many boulders
rolling down the hill. He exhibited wonder and awe with his pitying
glances.
Turning once toward the rear, he saw a man in the uniform of a
lieutenant of infantry marching the same way. He waited then,
subconsciously elate at a prospect of being able to make into words
the emotion which heretofore had only been expressed in the flash of
eyes and sensitive movements of his flexible mouth. He spoke to the
officer in rapid French, waving his arms wildly, and often pointing
with a dramatic finger. "Ah, this is too cruel, too cruel, too cruel.
Is it not? I did not think it would be as bad as this. I did not
think--God's mercy--I did not think at all. And yet I am a Greek. Or at
least my father was a Greek. I did not come here to fight. I am really
a correspondent, you see? I was to write for an Italian paper. I have
been educated in Italy. I have spent nearly all my life in Italy. At
the schools and universities! I knew nothing of war! I was a student--a
student. I came here merely because my father was a Greek, and for his
sake I thought of Greece--I loved Greece. But I did not dream----"
He paused, breathing heavily. His eyes glistened from that soft
overflow which comes on occasion to the glance of a young woman.
Eager, passionate, profoundly moved, his first words, while facing
the procession of fugitives, had been an active definition of his own
dimension, his personal relation to men, geography, life. Throughout he
had preserved the fiery dignity of a tragedian.
The officer's manner at once deferred to this outburst. "Yes," he said,
polite but mournful, "these poor people! These poor people! I do not
know what is to become of these poor people."
The young man declaimed again. "I had no dream--I had no dream that it
would be like this! This is too cruel! Too cruel! Now I want to be a
soldier. Now I want to fight. Now I want to do battle for the land of
my father." He made a sweeping gesture into the north-west.
The officer was also a young man, but he was very bronzed and steady.
Above his high military collar of crimson cloth with one silver star
upon it, appeared a profile stern, quiet, and confident, respecting
fate, fearing only opinion. His clothes were covered with dust; the
only bright spot was the flame of the crimson collar. At the violent
cries of his companion he smiled as if to himself, meanwhile keeping
his eyes fixed in a glance ahead.
From a land toward which their faces were bent came a continuous
boom of artillery fire. It was sounding in regular measures like the
beating of a colossal clock, a clock that was counting the seconds in
the lives of the stars, and men had time to die between the ticks.
Solemn, oracular, inexorable, the great seconds tolled over the hills
as if God fronted this dial rimmed by the horizon. The soldier and
the correspondent found themselves silent. The latter in particular
was sunk in a great mournfulness, as if he had resolved willy-nilly
to swing to the bottom of the abyss where dwell secrets of his kind,
and had learned beforehand that all to be met there was cruelty
and hopelessness. A strap of his bright new leather leggings came
unfastened, and he bowed over it slowly, impressively, as one bending
over the grave of a child.
Then suddenly, the reverberations mingled until one could not separate
an explosion from another, and into the hubbub came the drawling sound
of a leisurely musketry fire. Instantly, for some reason of cadence,
the noise was irritating, silly, infantile. This uproar was childish.
It forced the nerves to object, to protest against this racket which
was as idle as the din of a lad with a drum.
The lieutenant lifted his finger and pointed. He spoke in vexed
tones, as if he held the other man personally responsible for the
noise. "Well, there!" he said. "If you wish for war you now have an
opportunity magnificent."
The correspondent raised himself upon his toes. He tapped his chest
with gloomy pride. "Yes! There is war! There is the war I wish to
enter. I fling myself in. I am a Greek, a Greek, you understand. I wish
to fight for my country. You know the way. Lead me. I offer myself."
Struck by a sudden thought he brought a case from his pocket, and
extracting a card handed it to the officer with a bow. "My name is
Peza," he said simply.
A strange smile passed over the soldier's face. There was pity and
pride--the vanity of experience--and contempt in it. "Very well," he
said, returning the bow. "If my company is in the middle of the fight
I shall be glad for the honour of your companionship. If my company is
not in the middle of the fight--I will make other arrangements for you."
Peza bowed once more, very stiffly, and correctly spoke his thanks.
On the edge of what he took to be a great venture toward death, he
discovered that he was annoyed at something in the lieutenant's tone.
Things immediately assumed new and extraordinary proportions. The
battle, the great carnival of woe, was sunk at once to an equation with
a vexation by a stranger. He wanted to ask the lieutenant what was his
meaning. He bowed again majestically; the lieutenant bowed. They flung
a shadow of manners, of capering tinsel ceremony across a land that
groaned, and it satisfied something within themselves completely.
In the meantime, the river of fleeing villagers had changed to simply
a last dropping of belated creatures, who fled past stammering and
flinging their hands high. The two men had come to the top of the great
hill. Before them was a green plain as level as an inland sea. It swept
northward, and merged finally into a length of silvery mist. Upon the
near part of this plain, and upon two grey treeless mountains at the
side of it, were little black lines from which floated slanting sheets
of smoke. It was not a battle to the nerves. One could survey it with
equanimity, as if it were a tea-table; but upon Peza's mind it struck a
loud clanging blow. It was war. Edified, aghast, triumphant, he paused
suddenly, his lips apart. He remembered the pageants of carnage that
had marched through the dreams of his childhood. Love he knew that he
had confronted, alone, isolated, wondering, an individual, an atom
taking the hand of a titanic principle. But, like the faintest breeze
on his forehead, he felt here the vibration from the hearts of forty
thousand men.
The lieutenant's nostrils were moving. "I must go at once," he said. "I
must go at once."
"I will go with you wherever you go," shouted Peza loudly.
A primitive track wound down the side of the mountain, and in their
rush they bounded from here to there, choosing risks which in the
ordinary caution of man would surely have seemed of remarkable danger.
The ardour of the correspondent surpassed the full energy of the
soldier. Several times he turned and shouted, "Come on! Come on!"
At the foot of the path they came to a wide road, which extended
toward the battle in a yellow and straight line. Some men were
trudging wearily to the rear. They were without rifles; their clumsy
uniforms were dirty and all awry. They turned eyes dully aglow with
fever upon the pair striding toward the battle. Others were bandaged
with the triangular kerchief upon which one could still see through
bloodstains the little explanatory pictures illustrating the ways to
bind various wounds. "Fig. 1."--"Fig. 2."--"Fig. 7." Mingled with
the pacing soldiers were peasants, indifferent, capable of smiling,
gibbering about the battle, which was to them an ulterior drama. A man
was leading a string of three donkeys to the rear, and at intervals
he was accosted by wounded or fevered soldiers, from whom he defended
his animals with ape-like cries and mad gesticulation. After much
chattering they usually subsided gloomily, and allowed him to go with
his sleek little beasts unburdened. Finally he encountered a soldier
who walked slowly with the assistance of a staff. His head was bound
with a wide bandage, grimey from blood and mud. He made application to
the peasant, and immediately they were involved in a hideous Levantine