A single rifle flashed in a thicket before the regiment. - Stephen Crane

His fingers twined nervously about his rifle. He wished that it was an engine of annihilating power. He felt that he and his companions were being taunted and derided from sincere convictions that they were poor and puny. His knowledge of his inability to take vengeance for it made his rage into a dark and stormy specter, that possessed him and made him dream of abominable cruelties. The tormentors were flies sucking insolently at his blood, and he thought that he would have given his life for a revenge of seeing their faces in pitiful plights.

The youth perceived that the time had come. He was about to be measured. For a moment he felt in the face of his great trial like a babe, and the flesh over his heart seemed very thin.

There were many who went in huddled procession,
They knew not wither,
But, at any rate, success or calamity
Would attend all in equality.

There was one who sought a new road,
He went into direful thickets,
And ultimately he died thus, alone;
But they said he had courage.