Part 30 (2/2)

The lieutenant, still holding his arm as if it were of gla.s.s, stood watching this battery until all detail of it was lost, save the figures of the riders, which rose and fell and waved lashes over the black ma.s.s.

Later, he turned his eyes toward the battle where the shooting sometimes crackled like bush-fires, sometimes sputtered with exasperating irregularity, and sometimes reverberated like the thunder. He saw the smoke rolling upward and saw crowds of men who ran and cheered, or stood and blazed away at the inscrutable distance.

He came upon some stragglers, and they told him how to find the field hospital. They described its exact location. In fact, these men, no longer having part in the battle, knew more of it than others. They told the performance of every corps, every division, the opinion of every general. The lieutenant, carrying his wounded arm rearward, looked upon them with wonder.

At the roadside a brigade was making coffee and buzzing with talk like a girls' boarding-school. Several officers came out to him and inquired concerning things of which he knew nothing. One, seeing his arm, began to scold. ”Why, man, that's no way to do. You want to fix that thing.”

He appropriated the lieutenant and the lieutenant's wound. He cut the sleeve and laid bare the arm, every nerve of which softly fluttered under his touch. He bound his handkerchief over the wound, scolding away in the meantime. His tone allowed one to think that he was in the habit of being wounded every day. The lieutenant hung his head, feeling, in this presence, that he did not know how to be correctly wounded.

The low white tents of the hospital were grouped around an old school-house. There was here a singular commotion. In the foreground two ambulances interlocked wheels in the deep mud. The drivers were tossing the blame of it back and forth, gesticulating and berating, while from the ambulances, both crammed with wounded, there came an occasional groan. An interminable crowd of bandaged men were coming and going.

Great numbers sat under the trees nursing heads or arms or legs. There was a dispute of some kind raging on the steps of the school-house.

Sitting with his back against a tree a man with a face as grey as a new army blanket was serenely smoking a corn-cob pipe. The lieutenant wished to rush forward and inform him that he was dying.

A busy surgeon was pa.s.sing near the lieutenant. ”Good-morning,” he said, with a friendly smile. Then he caught sight of the lieutenant's arm and his face at once changed. ”Well, let's have a look at it.” He seemed possessed suddenly of a great contempt for the lieutenant. This wound evidently placed the latter on a very low social plane. The doctor cried out impatiently, ”What mutton-head had tied it up that way anyhow?” The lieutenant answered, ”Oh, a man.”

When the wound was disclosed the doctor fingered it disdainfully.

”Humph,” he said. ”You come along with me and I'll 'tend to you.” His voice contained the same scorn as if he were saying, ”You will have to go to jail.”

The lieutenant had been very meek, but now his face flushed, and he looked into the doctor's eyes. ”I guess I won't have it amputated,” he said.

”Nonsense, man! Nonsense! Nonsense!” cried the doctor. ”Come along, now.

I won't amputate it. Come along. Don't be a baby.”

”Let go of me,” said the lieutenant, holding back wrathfully, his glance fixed upon the door of the old school-house, as sinister to him as the portals of death.

And this is the story of how the lieutenant lost his arm. When he reached home, his sisters, his mother, his wife, sobbed for a long time at the sight of the flat sleeve. ”Oh, well,” he said, standing shamefaced amid these tears, ”I don't suppose it matters so much as all that.”

THE VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN.

The old man Popocatepetl was seated on a high rock with his white mantle about his shoulders. He looked at the sky, he looked at the sea, he looked at the land--nowhere could he see any food. And he was very hungry, too.

Who can understand the agony of a creature whose stomach is as large as a thousand churches, when this same stomach is as empty as a broken water jar?

He looked longingly at some island in the sea. ”Ah, those flat cakes! If I had them.” He stared at storm-clouds in the sky. ”Ah, what a drink is there.” But the King of Everything, you know, had forbidden the old man Popocatepetl to move at all, because he feared that every footprint would make a great hole in the land. So the old fellow was obliged to sit still and wait for his food to come within reach. Any one who has tried this plan knows what intervals lie between meals.

Once his friend, the little eagle, flew near, and Popocatepetl called to him. ”Ho, tiny bird, come and consider with me as to how I shall be fed.”

The little eagle came and spread his legs apart and considered manfully, but he could do nothing with the situation. ”You see,” he said, ”this is no ordinary hunger which one goat will suffice--”

Popocatepetl groaned an a.s.sent.

”--but it is an enormous affair,” continued the little eagle, ”which requires something like a dozen stars. I don't see what can be done unless we get that little creature of the earth--that little animal with two arms, two legs, one head, and a very brave air, to invent something.

He is said to be very wise.”

”Who claims it for him?” asked Popocatepetl.

<script>