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As directed by the Lieutenant, he went to the clump of trees, but he found no dressing-station there. He found only a dead soldier lying with his face buried in his arms, and with his shoulders humped high as if he was convulsively sobbing. Martin decided to make his way to the road, deeming that he thus would better his chances of getting to a surgeon. But he suddenly found his way blocked by a fence of barbed wire. Such was his mental condition that he brought up at a rigid halt before this fence and stared stupidly at it. It did not seem to him possible that this obstacle could be defeated by any means. The fence was there and it stopped his progress. He could not go in that direction.

But as he turned he espied that procession of wounded men, strange pilgrims, which had already worn a path in the tall grass. They were passing through a gap in the fence. Martin joined them. The bullets were flying over them in sheets, but many of them bore themselves as men who had now exacted from fate a singular immunity. Generally there were no out-cries, no kicking, no talk at all. They too, like Martin, seemed buried in a vague but profound melancholy.

But there was one who cried out loudly. A man shot in the head was being carried arduously by four comrades, and he continually yelled one word that was terrible in its primitive strength.”Bread!Bread!Bread!”

Following him and his bearers were a limping crowd of men, less cruelly wounded, who kept their eyes always fixed on him, as if they gained from his extreme agony some balm for their own sufferings.

“Bread!Give me bread!”

Martin plucked a man by the sleeve. The man had been shot in the foot and was making his way with the help of a curved, incompetent stick. It is an axiom of war that wounded men can never find straight sticks.

“What’s the matter with that feller?” asked Martin.

“Nutty,” said the man.

“Why is he?”

“Shot in th’ head,” answered the other impatiently.

The wail of the sufferer rose in the field, amid the swift rasp of bullets and the boom and shatter of shrapnel.”Bread!Bread!Oh, God, can’t you give me bread?Bread!”The bearers of him were suffering exquisite agony, and often exchanged glances which exhibited their despair of ever getting free of this tragedy. It seemed endless.

“Bread!Bread!Bread!”

But despite the fact that there was always in the way of this crowd’s wistful melancholy, one must know that there were plenty of men who laughed, laughed at their wounds, whimsically, quaintly, inventing odd humors concerning bicycles and cabs, extracting from this shedding of their blood a wonderful amount of material for cheerful badinage, and with their faces twisted from pain as they stepped, they often joked like music-hall stars. And perhaps this was the most tearful part of all.

They trudged along a road until they reached a ford. Here, under the eave of the bank, lay a dismal company. In the mud and the damp shade of some bushes were a half-hundred pale-faced men prostrate. Two or three surgeons were working there. Also there was a chaplain, grim-mouthed, resolute, his surtout discarded. Overhead always was that incessant, maddening wail of bullets.

Martin was standing gazing drowsily at the scene when a surgeon grabbed him.”Here!What’s the matter with you?”Martin was daunted. He wondered what he had done that the surgeon should be so angry with him.

“In the arm,” he muttered, half shame-facedly.

After the surgeon had hastily and irritably bandaged the injured member, he glared at Martin and said, “You can walk all right, can’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Martin.

“Well, now, you just make tracks down that road.”

“Yes, sir.”Martin went meekly off. The doctor had seemed exasperated almost to the point of madness.

The road was at this time swept with the fire of a body of Spanish sharpshooters who had come cunningly around the flanks of the American army, and were now hidden in the dense foliage that lined both sides of the road. They were shooting at everything. The road was as crowded as a street in a cit
y, and at an absurdly short range they emptied at the passing people. They were aided always by the over-sweep from the regular Spanish line of battle.