A Son of the Gods and A Horseman in the Sky | Page 3

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 knew 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 reformed 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 battle 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. He is deadly pale.
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; we are but "dead men
all." But we remember that we laughed! On and on, straight for the
hedge-lined wall, he rides. Not a look backward. Oh, 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 there is
silence absolute. 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.