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Men, Women, and Boats

S >> Stephen Crane >> Men, Women, and Boats




Timothy Lean felt as if tons had been swiftly lifted from off his
forehead. He had felt that perhaps the private might empty the shovel
on--on the face. It had been emptied on the feet. There was a great
point gained there--ha, ha!--the first shovelful had been emptied on
the feet. How satisfactory!

The adjutant began to babble. "Well, of course--a man we've messed with
all these years--impossible--you can't, you know, leave your intimate
friends rotting on the field. Go on, for God's sake, and shovel, you!"

The man with the shovel suddenly ducked, grabbed his left arm with his
right hand, and looked at his officer for orders. Lean picked the shovel
from the ground. "Go to the rear," he said to the wounded man. He also
addressed the other private. "You get under cover, too; I'll finish this
business."

The wounded man scrambled hard still for the top of the ridge without
devoting any glances to the direction whence the bullets came, and the
other man followed at an equal pace; but he was different, in that he
looked back anxiously three times.

This is merely the way--often--of the hit and unhit.

Timothy Lean filled the shovel, hesitated, and then in a movement which
was like a gesture of abhorrence he flung the dirt into the grave, and
as it landed it made a sound--plop! Lean suddenly stopped and mopped his
brow--a tired laborer.

"Perhaps we have been wrong," said the adjutant. His glance wavered
stupidly. "It might have been better if we hadn't buried him just at
this time. Of course, if we advance to-morrow the body would have
been--"

"Damn you," said Lean, "shut your mouth!" He was not the senior officer.

He again filled the shovel and flung the earth. Always the earth made
that sound--plop! For a space Lean worked frantically, like a man
digging himself out of danger.

Soon there was nothing to be seen but the chalk-blue face. Lean filled
the shovel. "Good God," he cried to the adjutant. "Why didn't you turn
him somehow when you put him in? This--" Then Lean began to stutter.

The adjutant understood. He was pale to the lips. "Go on, man," he
cried, beseechingly, almost in a shout. Lean swung back the shovel. It
went forward in a pendulum curve. When the earth landed it made a sound
--plop!




AN EPISODE OF WAR


The lieutenant's rubber blanket lay on the ground, and upon it he had
poured the company's supply of coffee. Corporals and other
representatives of the grimy and hot-throated men who lined the
breastwork had come for each squad's portion.

The lieutenant was frowning and serious at this task of division. His
lips pursed as he drew with his sword various crevices in the heap until
brown squares of coffee, astoundingly equal in size, appeared on the
blanket. He was on the verge of a great triumph in mathematics, and the
corporals were thronging forward, each to reap a little square, when
suddenly the lieutenant cried out and looked quickly at a man near him
as if he suspected it was a case of personal assault. The others cried
out also when they saw blood upon the lieutenant's sleeve.

He had winced like a man stung, swayed dangerously, and then
straightened. The sound of his hoarse breathing was plainly audible. He
looked sadly, mystically, over the breastwork at the green face of a
wood, where now were many little puffs of white smoke. During this
moment the men about him gazed statue-like and silent, astonished and
awed by this catastrophe which happened when catastrophes were not
expected--when they had leisure to observe it.

As the lieutenant stared at the wood, they too swung their heads, so
that for another instant all hands, still silent, contemplated the
distant forest as if their minds were fixed upon the mystery of a
bullet's journey.

The officer had, of course, been compelled to take his sword into his
left hand. He did not hold it by the hilt. He gripped it at the middle
of the blade, awkwardly. Turning his eyes from the hostile wood, he
looked at the sword as he held it there, and seemed puzzled as to what
to do with it, where to put it. In short, this weapon had of a sudden
become a strange thing to him. He looked at it in a kind of
stupefaction, as if he had been endowed with a trident, a sceptre, or a
spade.

Finally he tried to sheath it. To sheath a sword held by the left hand,
at the middle of the blade, in a scabbard hung at the left hip, is a
feat worthy of a sawdust ring. This wounded officer engaged in a
desperate struggle with the sword and the wobbling scabbard, and during
the time of it he breathed like a wrestler.

But at this instant the men, the spectators, awoke from their stone-like
poses and crowded forward sympathetically. The orderly-sergeant took the
sword and tenderly placed it in the scabbard. At the time, he leaned
nervously backward, and did not allow even his finger to brush the body
of the lieutenant. A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it.
Well men shy from this new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded
man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all
existence--the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine,
snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds
radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand
sometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyes
thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a finger
upon him might send him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at
once into the dim, grey unknown. And so the orderly-sergeant, while
sheathing the sword, leaned nervously backward.

There were others who proffered assistance. One timidly presented his
shoulder and asked the lieutenant if he cared to lean upon it, but the
latter waved him away mournfully. He wore the look of one who knows he
is the victim of a terrible disease and understands his helplessness. He
again stared over the breastwork at the forest, and then turning went
slowly rearward. He held his right wrist tenderly in his left hand as if
the wounded arm was made of very brittle glass.

And the men in silence stared at the wood, then at the departing
lieutenant--then at the wood, then at the lieutenant.

As the wounded officer passed from the line of battle, he was enabled to
see many things which as a participant in the fight were unknown to him.
He saw a general on a black horse gazing over the lines of blue infantry
at the green woods which veiled his problems. An aide galloped
furiously, dragged his horse suddenly to a halt, saluted, and presented
a paper. It was, for a wonder, precisely like an historical painting.

To the rear of the general and his staff a group, composed of a bugler,
two or three orderlies, and the bearer of the corps standard, all upon
maniacal horses, were working like slaves to hold their ground,
preserve, their respectful interval, while the shells boomed in the air
about them, and caused their chargers to make furious quivering leaps.

A battery, a tumultuous and shining mass, was swirling toward the right.
The wild thud of hoofs, the cries of the riders shouting blame and
praise, menace and encouragement, and, last the roar of the wheels, the
slant of the glistening guns, brought the lieutenant to an intent pause.
The battery swept in curves that stirred the heart; it made halts as
dramatic as the crash of a wave on the rocks, and when it fled onward,
this aggregation of wheels, levers, motors, had a beautiful unity, as if
it were a missile. The sound of it was a war-chorus that reached into
the depths of man's emotion.

The lieutenant, still holding his arm as if it were of glass, 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 mass.

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 passing 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."




AN EXPERIMENT IN MISERY


It was late at night, and a fine rain was swirling softly down, causing
the pavements to glisten with hue of steel and blue and yellow in the
rays of the innumerable lights. A youth was trudging slowly, without
enthusiasm, with his hands buried deep in his trousers' pockets, toward
the downtown places where beds can be hired for coppers. He was clothed
in an aged and tattered suit, and his derby was a marvel of dust-covered
crown and torn rim. He was going forth to eat as the wanderer may eat,
and sleep as the homeless sleep. By the time he had reached City Hall
Park he was so completely plastered with yells of "bum" and "hobo," and
with various unholy epithets that small boys had applied to him at
intervals, that he was in a state of the most profound dejection. The
sifting rain saturated the old velvet collar of his overcoat, and as the
wet cloth pressed against his neck, he felt that there no longer could
be pleasure in life. He looked about him searching for an outcast of
highest degree that they too might share miseries, but the lights threw
a quivering glare over rows and circles of deserted benches that
glistened damply, showing patches of wet sod behind them. It seemed that
their usual freights had fled on this night to better things. There were
only squads of well-dressed Brooklyn people who swarmed towards the
bridge.

The young man loitered about for a time and then went shuffling off down
Park Row. In the sudden descent in style of the dress of the crowd he
felt relief, and as if he were at last in his own country. He began to
see tatters that matched his tatters. In Chatham Square there were
aimless men strewn in front of saloons and lodging-houses, standing
sadly, patiently, reminding one vaguely of the attitudes of chickens in
a storm. He aligned himself with these men, and turned slowly to occupy
himself with the flowing life of the great street.

Through the mists of the cold and storming night, the cable cars went in
silent procession, great affairs shining with red and brass, moving with
formidable power, calm and irresistible, dangerful and gloomy, breaking
silence only by the loud fierce cry of the gong. Two rivers of people
swarmed along the sidewalks, spattered with black mud, which made each
shoe leave a scarlike impression. Overhead elevated trains with a shrill
grinding of the wheels stopped at the station, which upon its leglike
pillars seemed to resemble some monstrous kind of crab squatting over
the street. The quick fat puffings of the engines could be heard. Down
an alley there were somber curtains of purple and black, on which street
lamps dully glittered like embroidered flowers.

A saloon stood with a voracious air on a corner. A sign leaning against
the front of the door-post announced "Free hot soup to-night!" The swing
doors, snapping to and fro like ravenous lips, made gratified smacks as
the saloon gorged itself with plump men, eating with astounding and
endless appetite, smiling in some indescribable manner as the men came
from all directions like sacrifices to a heathenish superstition.

Caught by the delectable sign the young man allowed himself to be
swallowed. A bartender placed a schooner of dark and portentous beer on
the bar. Its monumental form upreared until the froth a-top was above
the crown of the young man's brown derby.

"Soup over there, gents," said the bartender affably. A little yellow
man in rags and the youth grasped their schooners and went with speed
toward a lunch counter, where a man with oily but imposing whiskers
ladled genially from a kettle until he had furnished his two mendicants
with a soup that was steaming hot, and in which there were little
floating suggestions of chicken. The young man, sipping his broth, felt
the cordiality expressed by the warmth of the mixture, and he beamed at
the man with oily but imposing whiskers, who was presiding like a priest
behind an altar. "Have some more, gents?" he inquired of the two sorry
figures before him. The little yellow man accepted with a swift gesture,
but the youth shook his head and went out, following a man whose
wondrous seediness promised that he would have a knowledge of cheap
lodging-houses.

On the sidewalk he accosted the seedy man. "Say, do you know a cheap
place to sleep?"

The other hesitated for a time, gazing sideways. Finally he nodded in
the direction of the street, "I sleep up there," he said, "when I've got
the price."

"How much?"

"Ten cents."
The young man shook his head dolefully. "That's too rich for me."

At that moment there approached the two a reeling man in strange
garments. His head was a fuddle of bushy hair and whiskers, from which
his eyes peered with a guilty slant. In a close scrutiny it was possible
to distinguish the cruel lines of a mouth which looked as if its lips
had just closed with satisfaction over some tender and piteous morsel.
He appeared like an assassin steeped in crimes performed awkwardly.

But at this time his voice was tuned to the coaxing key of an
affectionate puppy. He looked at the men with wheedling eyes, and began
to sing a little melody for charity.

"Say, gents, can't yeh give a poor feller a couple of cents t' git a
bed? I got five, and I gits anudder two I gits me a bed. Now, on th'
square, gents, can't yeh jest gimme two cents t' git a bed? Now, yeh
know how a respecter'ble gentlem'n feels when he's down on his luck, an'
I--"

The seedy man, staring with imperturbable countenance at a train which
clattered overhead, interrupted in an expressionless voice--"Ah, go t'
h----!"

But the youth spoke to the prayerful assassin in tones of astonishment
and inquiry. "Say, you must be crazy! Why don't yeh strike somebody that
looks as if they had money?"

The assassin, tottering about on his uncertain legs, and at intervals
brushing imaginary obstacles from before his nose, entered into a long
explanation of the psychology of the situation. It was so profound that
it was unintelligible.

When he had exhausted the subject, the young man said to him:

"Let's see th' five cents."

The assassin wore an expression of drunken woe at this sentence, filled
with suspicion of him. With a deeply pained air he began to fumble in
his clothing, his red hands trembling. Presently he announced in a voice
of bitter grief, as if he had been betrayed--"There's on'y four."

"Four," said the young man thoughtfully. "Well, look here, I'm a
stranger here, an' if ye'll steer me to your cheap joint I'll find the
other three."

The assassin's countenance became instantly radiant with joy. His
whiskers quivered with the wealth of his alleged emotions. He seized the
young man's hand in a transport of delight and friendliness.

"B' Gawd," he cried, "if ye'll do that, b' Gawd, I'd say yeh was a
damned good fellow, I would, an' I'd remember yeh all m' life, I would,
b' Gawd, an' if I ever got a chance I'd return the compliment"--he spoke
with drunken dignity--"b' Gawd, I'd treat yeh white, I would, an' I'd
allus remember yeh."

The young man drew back, looking at the assassin coldly. "Oh, that's all
right," he said. "You show me th' joint--that's all you've got t' do."

The assassin, gesticulating gratitude, led the young man along a dark
street. Finally he stopped before a little dusty door. He raised his
hand impressively. "Look-a-here," he said, and there was a thrill of
deep and ancient wisdom upon his face, "I've brought yeh here, an'
that's my part, ain't it? If th' place don't suit yeh, yeh needn't git
mad at me, need yeh? There won't be no bad feelin', will there?"

"No," said the young man.

The assassin waved his arm tragically, and led the march up the steep
stairway. On the way the young man furnished the assassin with three
pennies. At the top a man with benevolent spectacles looked at them
through a hole in a board. He collected their money, wrote some names on
a register, and speedily was leading the two men along a gloom-shrouded
corridor.

Shortly after the beginning of this journey the young man felt his liver
turn white, for from the dark and secret places of the building there
suddenly came to his nostrils strange and unspeakable odors, that
assailed him like malignant diseases with wings. They seemed to be from
human bodies closely packed in dens; the exhalations from a hundred
pairs of reeking lips; the fumes from a thousand bygone debauches; the
expression of a thousand present miseries.

A man, naked save for a little snuff-colored undershirt, was parading
sleepily along the corridor. He rubbed his eyes, and, giving vent to a
prodigious yawn, demanded to be told the time.

"Half-past one."

The man yawned again. He opened a door, and for a moment his form was
outlined against a black, opaque interior. To this door came the three
men, and as it was again opened the unholy odors rushed out like fiends,
so that the young man was obliged to struggle as against an overpowering
wind.

It was some time before the youth's eyes were good in the intense gloom
within, but the man with benevolent spectacles led him skilfully,
pausing but a moment to deposit the limp assassin upon a cot. He took
the youth to a cot that lay tranquilly by the window, and showing him a
tall locker for clothes that stood near the head with the ominous air of
a tombstone, left him.

The youth sat on his cot and peered about him. There was a gas-jet in a
distant part of the room, that burned a small flickering orange-hued
flame. It caused vast masses of tumbled shadows in all parts of the
place, save where, immediately about it, there was a little grey haze.
As the young man's eyes became used to the darkness, he could see upon
the cots that thickly littered the floor the forms of men sprawled out,
lying in deathlike silence, or heaving and snoring with tremendous
effort, like stabbed fish.

The youth locked his derby and his shoes in the mummy case near him, and
then lay down with an old and familiar coat around his shoulders. A
blanket he handed gingerly, drawing it over part of the coat. The cot
was covered with leather, and as cold as melting snow. The youth was
obliged to shiver for some time on this affair, which was like a slab.
Presently, however, his chill gave him peace, and during this period of
leisure from it he turned his head to stare at his friend the assassin,
whom he could dimly discern where he lay sprawled on a cot in the
abandon of a man filled with drink. He was snoring with incredible
vigor. His wet hair and beard dimly glistened, and his inflamed nose
shone with subdued lustre like a red light in a fog.

Within reach of the youth's hand was one who lay with yellow breast and
shoulders bare to the cold drafts. One arm hung over the side of the
cot, and the fingers lay full length upon the wet cement floor of the
room. Beneath the inky brows could be seen the eyes of the man exposed
by the partly opened lids. To the youth it seemed that he and this
corpse-like being were exchanging a prolonged stare, and that the other
threatened with his eyes. He drew back, watching his neighbor from the
shadows of his blanket edge. The man did not move once through the
night, but lay in this stillness as of death like a body stretched out
expectant of the surgeon's knife.

And all through the room could be seen the tawny hues of naked flesh,
limbs thrust into the darkness, projecting beyond the cots; upreared
knees, arms hanging long and thin over the cot edges. For the most part
they were statuesque, carven, dead. With the curious lockers standing
all about like tombstones, there was a strange effect of a graveyard
where bodies were merely flung.

Yet occasionally could be seen limbs wildly tossing in fantastic
nightmare gestures, accompanied by guttural cries, grunts, oaths. And
there was one fellow off in a gloomy corner, who in his dreams was
oppressed by some frightful calamity, for of a sudden he began to utter
long wails that went almost like yells from a hound, echoing wailfully
and weird through this chill place of tombstones where men lay like the
dead.

The sound in its high piercing beginnings, that dwindled to final
melancholy moans, expressed a red and grim tragedy of the unfathomable
possibilities of the man's dreams. But to the youth these were not
merely the shrieks of a vision-pierced man: they were an utterance of
the meaning of the room and its occupants. It was to him the protest of
the wretch who feels the touch of the imperturbable granite wheels, and
who then cries with an impersonal eloquence, with a strength not from
him, giving voice to the wail of a whole section, a class, a people.
This, weaving into the young man's brain, and mingling with his views of
the vast and sombre shadows that, like mighty black fingers, curled
around the naked bodies, made the young man so that he did not sleep,
but lay carving the biographies for these men from his meagre
experience. At times the fellow in the corner howled in a writhing agony
of his imaginations.

Finally a long lance-point of grey light shot through the dusty panes of
the window. Without, the young man could see roofs drearily white in the
dawning. The point of light yellowed and grew brighter, until the golden
rays of the morning sun came in bravely and strong. They touched with
radiant color the form of a small fat man, who snored in stuttering
fashion. His round and shiny bald head glowed suddenly with the valor of
a decoration. He sat up, blinked at the sun, swore fretfully, and pulled
his blanket over the ornamental splendors of his head.

The youth contentedly watched this rout of the shadows before the bright
spears of the sun, and presently he slumbered. When he awoke he heard
the voice of the assassin raised in valiant curses. Putting up his head,
he perceived his comrade seated on the side of the cot engaged in
scratching his neck with long finger-nails that rasped like files.

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