Then rose a loud cheer from the battery on the hill, and, looking west,
he saw the war-balloon hung high above the trees and moving toward
Santiago. The advance had begun over there; there was the main
attack--the big battle. It was interesting and horrible enough where he
was, but Caney was not Santiago; and Grafton, too, mounted his horse and
galloped after Basil.

* * * * *

At head-quarters began the central lane of death that led toward San
Juan, and Basil picked his way through it at a slow walk--his excitement
gone for the moment and his heart breaking at the sight of the terrible
procession on its way to the rear. Men with arms in slings; men with
trousers torn away at the knee, and bandaged legs; men with brow, face,
mouth, or throat swathed; men with no shirts, but a broad swathe around
the chest or stomach--each bandage grotesquely pictured with human
figures printed to show how the wound should be bound, on whatever part
of the body the bullet entered. Men staggering along unaided, or between
two comrades, or borne on litters, some white and quiet, some groaning
and blood-stained, some conscious, some dying, some using a rifle for a
support, or a stick thrust through the side of a tomato-can. Rolls,
haversacks, blouses, hardtack, bibles, strewn by the wayside, where the
soldiers had thrown them before they went into action. It was curious,
but nearly all of the wounded were dazed and drunken in appearance,
except at the brows, which were tightly drawn with pain. There was one
man, with short, thick, upright red hair, stumbling from one side of the
road to the other, with no wound apparent, and muttering:

"Oh, I don't know what happened to me. I don't know what happened to
me."