A SON OF THE GODS
by Ambrose Bierce
A breezy day and a sunny landscape. An open
country to right and left and forward; behind, a
wood. In the edge of this wood, facing the open
but not venturing into it, long lines of troops,
halted. The wood is alive with them, and full of
confused noises--the occasional rattle of wheels
as a battery of artillery goes into position to
cover the advance; the hum and murmur of the
soldiers talking; a sound of innumerable feet in
the dry leaves that strew the interspaces among
the trees; hoarse commands of officers. Detached
groups of horsemen are well in front--not altogether
exposed--many of them intently regarding the
crest of a hill a mile away in the direction of
the interrupted advance. For this powerful army,
moving in battle order through a forest, has met
with a formidable obstacle--the open country.
The crest of that gentle hill a mile away has a
sinister look; it says, Beware! Along it runs a
stone wall extending to left and right a great
distance. Behind the wall is a hedge; behind the
hedge are seen the tops of trees in rather
straggling order. Among the trees--what? It is
necessary to know.
Yesterday, and for many days and nights previously,
we were fighting somewhere; always there was
cannonading, with occasional keen rattlings of
musketry, mingled with cheers, our own or the
enemy's, we seldom knew, attesting some temporary
advantage. This morning at daybreak the enemy was
gone. We have moved forward across his earthworks,
across which we have so often vainly attempted to
move before, through the debris of his abandoned
camps, among the graves of his fallen, into the
woods beyond.
How curiously we had regarded everything! how
odd it all had seemed! Nothing had appeared
quite familiar; the most commonplace objects--an
old saddle, a splintered wheel, a forgotten
canteen--everything had related something of
the mysterious personality of those strange men
who had been killing us. The soldier never
becomes wholly familiar with the conception
of his foes as men like himself; he cannot
divest himself of the feeling that they are
another order of beings, differently conditioned,
in an environment not altogether of the earth.
The smallest vestiges of them rivet his attention
and engage his interest. He thinks of them as
inaccessible; and, catching an unexpected glimpse
of them, they appear farther away, and therefore
larger, than they really are--like objects in
a fog. He is somewhat in awe of them.
From the edge of the wood leading up the
acclivity are the tracks of horses and
wheels--the wheels of cannon. The yellow
grass is beaten down by the feet of infantry.
Clearly they have passed this way in thousands;
they have not withdrawn by the country roads.
This is significant--it is the difference
between retiring and retreating.
That group of horsemen is our commander, his
staff and escort. He is facing the distant
crest, holding his field-glass against his
eyes with both hands, his elbows needlessly
elevated. It is a fashion; it seems to dignify
the act; we are all addicted to it. Suddenly
he lowers the glass and says a few words to
those about him. Two or three aides detach
themselves from the group and canter away
into the woods, along the lines in each
direction. We did not hear his words, but
we know them: "Tell General X. to send
forward the skirmish line." Those of us who
have been out of place resume our positions;
the men resting at ease straighten themselves
and the ranks are re-formed without a command.
Some of us staff officers dismount and look
at our saddle girths; those already on the
ground remount.
Galloping rapidly along in the edge of the
open ground comes a young officer on a
snow-white horse. His saddle blanket is
scarlet. What a fool! No one who has ever
been in action but remembers how naturally
every rifle turns toward the man on a white
horse; no one but has observed how a bit of
red enrages the bull of battle. That such
colors are fashionable in military life must
be accepted as the most astonishing of all
the phenomena of human vanity. They would
seem to have been devised to increase the
death-rate.
This young officer is in full uniform, as if
on parade. He is all agleam with bullion--a
blue-and-gold edition of the Poetry of War.
A wave of derisive laughter runs abreast of
him all along the line. But how handsome he
is!--with what careless grace he sits his horse!
He reins up within a respectful distance of
the corps commander and salutes. The old
soldier nods familiarly; he evidently knows
him. A brief colloquy between them is going
on; the young man seems to be preferring some
request which the elder one is indisposed to
grant. Let us ride a little nearer. Ah! too
late--it is ended. The young officer salutes
again, wheels his horse, and rides straight
toward the crest of the hill!
A thin line of skirmishers, the men deployed
at six paces or so apart, now pushes from the
wood into the open. The commander speaks to
his bugler, who claps his instrument to his
lips. Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la! The skirmishers
halt in their tracks.
Meantime the young horseman has advanced a
hundred yards. He is riding at a walk, straight
up the long slope, with never a turn of the
head. How glorious! Gods! what would we not
give to be in his place--with his soul! He
does not draw his sabre; his right hand hangs
easily at his side. The breeze catches the
plume in his hat and flutters it smartly. The
sunshine rests upon his shoulder-straps,
lovingly, like a visible benediction. Straight
on he rides. Ten thousand pairs of eyes are
fixed upon him with an intensity that he can
hardly fail to feel; ten thousand hearts keep
quick time to the inaudible hoof-beats of his
snowy steed. He is not alone--he draws all
souls after him. But we remember that we
laughed! On and on, straight for the hedge-lined
wall, he rides. Not a look backward. O, if
he would but turn--if he could but see the love,
the adoration, the atonement!
Not a word is spoken; the populous depths of
the forest still murmur with their unseen and
unseeing swarm, but all along the fringe is
silence. The burly commander is an equestrian
statue of himself. The mounted staff officers,
their field glasses up, are motionless all.
The line of battle in the edge of the wood
stands at a new kind of "attention," each man
in the attitude in which he was caught by the
consciousness of what is going on. All these
hardened and impenitent man-killers, to whom
death in its awfulest forms is a fact familiar
to their every-day observation; who sleep on
hills trembling with the thunder of great guns,
dine in the midst of streaming missiles, and
play at cards among the dead faces of their
dearest friends--all are watching with suspended
breath and beating hearts the outcome of an
act involving the life of one man. Such is
the magnetism of courage and devotion.
If now you should turn your head you would see
a simultaneous movement among the spectators--a
start, as if they had received an electric
shock--and looking forward again to the now
distant horseman you would see that he has in
that instant altered his direction and is riding
at an angle to his former course. The spectators
suppose the sudden deflection to be caused by
a shot, perhaps a wound; but take this field-glass
and you will observe that he is riding toward
a break in the wall and hedge. He means, if not
killed, to ride through and overlook the country
beyond.
You are not to forget the nature of this man's
act; it is not permitted to you to think of it
as an instance of bravado, nor, on the other
hand, a needless sacrifice of self. If the
enemy has not retreated he is in force on that
ridge. The investigator will encounter nothing
less than a line-of-battle; there is no need of
pickets, videttes, skirmishers, to give warning
of our approach; our attacking lines will be
visible, conspicuous, exposed to an artillery
fire that will shave the ground the moment
they break from cover, and for half the
distance to a sheet of rifle bullets in which
nothing can live. In short, if the enemy is
there, it would be madness to attack him in
front; he must be maneuvered out by the
immemorial plan of threatening his line of
communication, as necessary to his existence as
to the diver at the bottom of the sea his air
tube. But how ascertain if the enemy is there?
There is but one way,--somebody must go and see.
The natural and customary thing to do is to
send forward a line of skirmishers. But in
this case they will answer in the affirmative
with all their lives; the enemy, crouching in
double ranks behind the stone wall and in cover
of the hedge, will wait until it is possible
to count each assailant's teeth. At the first
volley a half of the questioning line will
fall, the other half before it can accomplish
the predestined retreat. What a price to pay
for gratified curiosity! At what a dear rate
an army must sometimes purchase knowledge!
"Let me pay all," says this gallant man--this
military Christ!
There is no hope except the hope against hope that
the crest is clear. True, he might prefer capture
to death. So long as he advances, the line will
not fire--why should it? He can safely ride into
the hostile ranks and become a prisoner of war.
But this would defeat his object. It would not
answer our question; it is necessary either that
he return unharmed or be shot to death before our
eyes. Only so shall we know how to act. If
captured--why, that might have been done by a
half-dozen stragglers.
Now begins an extraordinary contest of intellect
between a man and an army. Our horseman, now within
a quarter of a mile of the crest, suddenly wheels
to the left and gallops in a direction parallel to
it. He has caught sight of his antagonist; he knows
all. Some slight advantage of ground has enabled
him to overlook a part of the line. If he were here
he could tell us in words. But that is now hopeless;
he must make the best use of the few minutes of life
remaining to him, by compelling the enemy himself to
tell us as much and as plainly as possible--which,
naturally, that discreet power is reluctant to do.
Not a rifleman in those crouching ranks, not a
cannoneer at those masked and shotted guns, but
knows the needs of the situation, the imperative
duty of forbearance. Besides, there has been time
enough to forbid them all to fire. True, a single
rifle-shot might drop him and be no great disclosure.
But firing is infectious--and see how rapidly he
moves, with never a pause except as he whirls his
horse about to take a new direction, never directly
backward toward us, never directly forward toward
his executioners. All this is visible through the
glass; it seems occurring within pistol-shot; we
see all but the enemy, whose presence, whose
thoughts, whose motives we infer. To the unaided
eye there is nothing but a black figure on a white
horse, tracing slow zigzags against the slope of
a distant hill--so slowly they seem almost to
creep.
Now--the glass again--he has tired of his failure,
or sees his error, or has gone mad; he is dashing
directly forward at the wall, as if to take it at
a leap, hedge and all! One moment only and he wheels
right about and is speeding like the wind straight
down the slope--toward his friends, toward his
death! Instantly the wall is topped with a fierce
roll of smoke for a distance of hundreds of yards
to right and left. This is as instantly dissipated
by the wind, and before the rattle of the rifles
reaches us he is down. No, he recovers his seat;
he has but pulled his horse upon its haunches.
They are up and away! A tremendous cheer bursts
from our ranks, relieving the insupportable tension
of our feelings. And the horse and its rider? Yes,
they are up and away. Away, indeed--they are making
directly to our left, parallel to the now steadily
blazing and smoking wall. The rattle of the musketry
is continuous, and every bullet's target is that
courageous heart.
Suddenly a great bank of white smoke pushes
upward from behind the wall. Another and another--a
dozen roll up before the thunder of the explosions
and the humming of the missiles reach our ears
and the missiles themselves come bounding through
clouds of dust into our covert, knocking over here
and there a man and causing a temporary distraction,
a passing thought of self.
The dust drifts away. Incredible!--that enchanted
horse and rider have passed a ravine and are
climbing another slope to unveil another conspiracy
of silence, to thwart the will of another armed
host. Another moment and that crest too is in
eruption. The horse rears and strikes the air
with its forefeet. They are down at last. But
look again--the man has detached himself from
the dead animal. He stands erect, motionless,
holding his sabre in his right hand straight
above his head. His face is toward us. Now he
lowers his hand to a level with his face and
moves it outward, the blade of the sabre
describing a downward curve. It is a sign to us,
to the world, to posterity. It is a hero's salute
to death and history.
Again the spell is broken; our men attempt to
cheer; they are choking with emotion; they utter
hoarse, discordant cries; they clutch their
weapons and press tumultuously forward into the
open. The skirmishers, without orders, against
orders, are going forward at a keen run, like
hounds unleashed. Our cannon speak and the enemy's
now open in full chorus; to right and left as far
as we can see, the distant crest, seeming now so
near, erects its towers of cloud and the great shot
pitch roaring down among our moving masses. Flag
after flag of ours emerges from the wood, line
after line sweeps forth, catching the sunlight on
its burnished arms. The rear battalions alone are
in obedience; they preserve their proper distance
from the insurgent front.
The commander has not moved. He now removes his
field-glass from his eyes and glances to the right
and left. He sees the human current flowing on
either side of him and his huddled escort, like
tide waves parted by a rock. Not a sign of feeling
in his face; he is thinking. Again he directs his
eyes forward; they slowly traverse that malign and
awful crest. He addresses a calm word to his bugler.
Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la! The injunction has an imperiousness
which enforces it. It is repeated by all the bugles
of all the subordinate commanders; the sharp
metallic notes assert themselves above the hum of
the advance and penetrate the sound of the cannon.
To halt is to withdraw. The colors move slowly
back; the lines face about and sullenly follow,
bearing their wounded; the skirmishers return,
gathering up the dead.
Ah, those many, many needless dead! That great
soul whose beautiful body is lying over yonder,
so conspicuous against the sere hillside--could
it not have been spared the bitter consciousness
of a vain devotion? Would one exception have
marred too much the pitiless perfection of the
divine, eternal plan?
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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