rough the
crowd--Colonel Moultrie had struck his flag! "Forward!" cried one among
them, and they marched to the water's edge to fight for their homes.
Within the little fort one William Jasper, a sergeant, saw that a ball
had cut down the flag and it had fallen over the rampart. "Colonel," he
said to his commander, "don't let us fight without a flag." "What can
you do?" demanded Colonel Moultrie, "the staff is broken." Sergeant
Jasper was a man of few words and many deeds. He leaped through an
embrasure, walked the whole length of the fort in a heavy fire from the
ships, caught up the flag, brought it safely back, and fastened it to a
sponge-staff. Then, in the midst of cheers,--in which I fancy the
British also joined,--he fastened the rescued banner upon the bastion.
The following day the Governor came to the fort, asked for Sergeant
Jasper, presented him with his own sword, and gave him hearty thanks in
behalf of his country. Then he said, "I will gladly give you a
lieutenant's commission," but the honest man refused. "I am only a
sergeant," he said. "I don't know how to read or write, and I am not fit
to keep company with officers." Colonel Moultrie then gave him a roving
commission, and he often made some little trip with half a dozen men and
returned with a band of prisoners before any one realized that he had
gone. The wife of Major Elliot presented the regiment with a pair of
beautiful silken colors, which were afterwards carried in the assault
upon Savannah. The standard-bearers were shot down; another man seized
them, but he was also shot; then Sergeant Jasper caught them and
fastened them on the parapet, when he too was fatally wounded by a ball.
"Tell Mrs. Elliot," he said, "that I lost my life supporting the colors
she gave to our regiment." A tablet in honor of the brave sergeant was
long ago placed in Savannah.

The rattlesnake as an emblem seems to have been somewhat of a favorite
among the colonists. Besides Franklin's snake of the many
initials--which, indeed, might have stood, or coiled, for any sort of
serpent--there was the one borne by Patrick Henry's men when they
forced the Governor of Virginia to pay for the powder which he had
carried away from the colonial magazine. Then, too, there was a third
variety of snake, the one that stretched itself across a colonial
naval flag and proclaimed--from the top of the mast--"Don't tread on
me." On another flag the rattlesnake appeared coiled in the roots o