staff from
his dying hand, and mounted with it upward. A ball struck his right arm,
yet ere it could fall shattered by his side, his left hand caught the
flag and carried it onward. Even in the mad sweep of assault and death
the men around him found breath and time to hurrah, and those behind him
pressed more gallantly forward to follow such a lead. He kept in his
place, the colors flying,--though faint with loss of blood and wrung
with agony,--up the slippery steep; up to the walls of the fort; on the
wall itself, planting the flag where the men made that brief, splendid
stand, and melted away like snow before furnace-heat. Here a bayonet
thrust met him and brought him down, a great wound in his brave breast,
but he did not yield; dropping to his knees, pressing his unbroken arm
upon the gaping wound,--bracing himself against a dead comrade,--the
colors still flew; an inspiration to the men about him; a defiance to
the foe.

At last when the shattered ranks fell back, sullenly and slowly
retreating, it was seen by those who watched him,--men lying for three
hundred rods around in every form of wounded suffering,--that he was
painfully working his way downward, still holding aloft the flag, bent
evidently on saving it, and saving it as flag had rarely, if ever, been
saved before.

Some of the men had crawled, some had been carried, some hastily caught
up and helped by comrades to a sheltered tent out of range of the fire;
a hospital tent, they called it, if anything could bear that name which
was but a place where men could lie to suffer and expire, without a
bandage, a surgeon, or even a drop of cooling water to moisten parched
and dying lips. Among these was Jim. He had a small field-glass in his
pocket, and forgot or ignored his pain in his eager interest of watching
through this the progress of the man and the flag, and reporting
accounts to his no less eager companions. Black soldiers and white were
alike mad with excitement over the deed; and fear lest the colors which
had not yet dipped should at last bite the ground.

Now and then he paused at some impediment: it was where the dead and
dying were piled so thickly as to compel him to make a detour. Now and
then he rested a moment to press his arm tighter against his torn and
open breast. The rain fell in such torrents, the evening shadows were
gathering so thickly, that they could scarcely trace his course, long
before it was ended.

Slowly, painfully, he d