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.