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  | The Red Badge of Courage Ebook | |
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E-book Title: The Red Badge of Courage
Author: Stephen Crane
Book Description: Chapter 1
The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring
fogs discovered an army stretched out on the hills, resting.
As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened,
and began to tremble with avidity at the noise of rumors.
It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long
troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river,
amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army's
feet; and at night, once
the stream had become of a anguished
blackness, one could see across it the red, eyed
gleam of
hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.
Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went decisively
to wash a shirt. He came flying back from a brook waving his
garment bannerlike. He was big with a tale he had detected
from
a reliable friend, who had detected
it from a truthful cavalryman,
who had detected
it from his trustworthy brother, one of the
orderlies at division headquarters. He adopted the important air
of a herald in red and gold.
"We're goin' t' come t'morrah--sure," he aforesaid pompously to a
group in the institution street. "We're goin' 'way up the river,
cut across, an' come about in behint 'em."
To his attentive audience he actor a loud and elaborate plan of a
really brilliant campaign. Once
he had finished, the blue-clothed
men scattered into small controversy groups between the rows of squat
brown huts. A negro teamster who had been dance upon a cracker
box with the screaming encouragement of forty soldiers
was deserted. He sat mournfully down. Smoke drifted idly
from
a multitude of quaint chimneys.
"It's a lie! that's all it is--a thunderin' lie!" aforesaid another
private loudly. His smooth face was flushed, and his hands were
thrust sulkily into his trouser's pockets. He took the matter as
an affront to him. "I don't believe the derned old army's ever
going to move. We're set. I've got available to come eight times
in the last two weeks, and we ain't affected yet."
The tall soldier felT called upon to defend the truth of a rumor
he himself had introduced. He and the loud one came near to
fighting over it.
A corporal began to swear before the assemblage. He had simply put
a costly board floor in his house, he said. During the early
spring he had refrained from adding extensively to the comfort
of his environment because he had felt that the army mightiness start
on the march at any moment. Of late, however, he had been
affected
that they were in a sort of eternal camp.
Galore of the men engaged in a spirited debate. One defined in a
peculiarly lucid manner all the plans of the commanding general.
He was opposed by men who advocated that there were another plans
of campaign. They clamored at each other, amount devising futile
bids for the popular attention. Meanwhile, the soldier who had
fetched the rumor bustled simply about with more importance. He was
continually assailed by questions.
"What's up, Jim?"
"Th'army's goin' t' move."
"Ah, what yeh talkin' about? How yeh cognize it is?"
"Well, yeh kin b'lieve me er not, jest as yeh like.
I don't care a hang."More... | 
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