Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! He leaped down from the boulder, still screaming, his voice beginning to crack and give, and all around him his men were roaring animal screams, and he saw the whole Regiment rising and pouring over the wall and beginning to bound down through the dark bushes, over the dead and dying and wounded, hats coming off, hair flying, mouths making sounds, one man firing as he ran, the last bullet, last round. Chamberlain saw gray men below stop, freeze, crouch, then quickly turn. The move was so quick he could not believe it. Men were turning and running. Some were stopping to fire. There was the yellow flash and then they turned. Chamberlain saw a man drop a rifle and run. Another. A bullet plucked at Chamberlain’s coat, a hard pluck so that he thought he had caught a mom but looked down and saw the huge gash. But he was not hit. He saw an officer: handsome full-bearded man in gray, sword and revolver. Chamberlain ran toward him, stumbled, cursed the bad foot, looked up and aimed and fired and missed, then held aloft the saber. The officer turned, saw him coming, raised a pistol, and Chamberlain ran toward it downhill, unable to stop, stumbling downhill seeing the black hole of the pistol turning toward him, not anything but the small hole yards away, feet away, the officer’s face a blur behind it and no thought, a moment of gray suspension rushing silently, soundlessly toward the black hole… and the gun did not fire; the hammer clicked down on an empty shell, and Chamberlain was at the man’s throat with the saber and the man was handing him his sword, all in one motion, and Chamberlain stopped.
”The pistol too,” he said.
The officer handed him the gun: a cavalry revolver, Colt.
”Your prisoner, sir.” The face of the officer was very white, like old paper. Chamberlain nodded.
He looked up to see an open space. The Rebs had begun to fall back; now they were running. He had never seen them run; he stared, began limping forward to see. Great cries, incredible sounds, firing and yelling. The Regiment was driving a line, swinging to the fight, into the dark valley. Men were surrendering. He saw masses of gray coats, a hundred or more, moving back up the slope to his front, in good order, the only ones not running, and thought If they form again we’re in trouble, desperate trouble, and he began moving that way, ignoring the officer he had just captured. At that moment a new wave of firing broke out on the other side of the gray mass. He saw a line of white smoke erupt, the gray troops waver and move back this way, stop, rifles begin to fall, men begin to run to the right, trying to get away. Another line of fire-Morrill. B Company. Chamberlain moved that way. A soldier grabbed his Reb officer, grinning, by the arm. Chamberlain passed a man sitting on a rock, holding his stomach. He had been bayoneted. Blood coming from his mouth. Stepped on a dead body, wedged between rocks. Came upon Ellis Spear, grinning crazily, foolishly, face stretched and glowing with a wondrous light.
”By God, Colonel, by God, by God,” Spear said. He pointed. Men were running off down the valley. The Regiment was moving across the front of the 83rd Pennsylvania. He looked up the hill and saw them waving and a cheering. Chamberlain said, aloud, “I’ll be damned.”
The Regiment had not stopped, was chasing the Rebs down the long valley between the hills. Rebs had stopped everywhere, surrendering. Chamberlain said to Spear, “Go on up and stop the boys. They’ve gone far enough.”
”Yes, sir. But they’re on their way to Richmond.”
”Not today,” Chamberlain said. “They’ve done enough today.”
He stopped, took a deep breath, stood still, then turned a to look for Tom. Saw Morrill, of Company B, wandering toward him through thick brush.
”Hey, Colonel, glad to see you. I was beginning to wonder.”
Chamberlain stared. “You were beginning to wonder?”
”I tell you. Colonel, I keep thinking I better come back and help you, but you said stay out there and guard that flank, so I did, and I guess it come out all right, thank the Lord. Nobody came nowhere near me until just a few minutes ago. Then they come backin’ my way, which I didn’t expect. So we opened up, and they all turned around and quit, just like that. Damnedest thing you ever saw.” He shook his head, amazed. “Easiest fight I was ever in.”
Chamberlain sighed. “Captain,” he said, “next time I tell you to go out a ways, please don’t go quite so far.”
”Well, Colonel, we looked around, and there was this here stone wall, and it was comfortin’, you know?”
Tom was here, well, untouched. Chamberlain opened up into a smile. Tom had a Reb officer in tow, a weary gentleman with a face of grime and sadness, of exhausted despair.
”Hey, Lawrence, want you to meet this fella from Alabama. Cap’n Hawkins, want you to meet my brother. This here’s Colonel Chamberlain.”
Chamberlain put out a hand. “Sir,” he said. The Alabama man nodded slightly. His voice was so low Chamberlain could hardly hear it. “Do you have some water?”
”Certainly.” Chamberlain offered his own canteen. Off to the right a huge mass of prisoners: two hundred, maybe more. Most of them sitting, exhausted, heads down. Only a few men of the Regiment here, mostly Morrill’s Company.
Ironic. Chamberlain thought: well, he’s the only one with ammunition.
Firing was slacking beyond the hill. The charge of the 20th Maine had cleared the ground in front of the 83rd Pennsylvania; they were beginning to move down the hill, rounding up prisoners. As the Reb flank on this side fell apart and running men began to appear on the other side of the hill the attack there would break up. Yes, firing was less.
He heard whoops and hollers, felt a grin break out as if stepping into lovely sunshine. We did it, by God.
The Alabama man was sitting down. Chamberlain let him alone. Kilrain. Looked. Where? He moved painfully back up the rocks toward the position from which they had charged. Hip stiffening badly. Old Kilrain. Unhurtable.
He saw Kilrain from a distance. He was sitting on a rock, head back against a tree, arm black with streaked blood. But all right, all right, head bobbing bareheaded like a lively mossy white rock. Ruel Thomas was with him, and Tozier, working on the arm. Chamberlain bounded and slipped on wet rocks, forgetting his hurts, his throat stuffed. He knelt.
They had peeled back the shirt and the arm was whitely soft where they had cleaned it and there was a mess around the shoulder. Great round muscle: strong old man. Chamberlain grinned, giggled, wiped his face.
”Buster? How you doin’? You old mick.”
Kilrain peered at him vaguely cheerily. His face had a linen softness.
”They couldn’t seem hardly to miss,” he said regretfully, apologizing. “Twice, would you believe. For the love of Mary. Twicet.”
He snorted, gloomed, looked up into Chamberlain’s eyes and blinked.
”And how are you. Colonel darlin’? This fine day?”
Chamberlain nodded, grinning foolishly. There was a tight long silent moment. Chamberlain felt a thickness all through his chest. It was like coming back to your father, having done something fine, and your father knows it, and you can see the knowledge in his eyes, and you are both too proud to speak of it. But he knows. Kilrain looked away. He tried to move bloody fingers.
”In the armpit,” he gloomed forlornly. “For the love of God. He died of his wounds. In the bloody bleedin’ armpit. Ak.”
To Tozier, Chamberlain said, “How is that?”
Tozier shrugged. “It’s an arm.”
”By God,” Chamberlain said. “I think you’ll live.”
Kilrain blinked hazily. “Only an arm. Got to lose something, might’s well be an arm. Can part with that easier than the other mechanics of nature, an thass the truth.” He was blurring; he stretched his eyes. “Used to worry about that, you know? Only thing ever worried, really. Losing wrong part.” His eyes closed; his voice was plaintive. “I could do with a nip right now.”