CHAPTER XX.
"_Drink,--for thy necessity is yet greater than mine._" Sir Philip Sidney The hospital boat, going out of Beaufort, was a sad, yet great sight.

It was but necessary to look around it to see that the men here gathered had stood on the slippery battle-sod, and scorned to flinch.

You heard no cries, scarcely a groan; whatever anguish wrung them as they were lifted into their berths, or were turned or raised for comfort, found little outward sign,--a long, gasping breath now and then; a suppressed exclamation; sometimes a laugh, to cover what would else be a cry of mortal agony; almost no swearing; these men had been too near the awful realities of death and eternity, some of them were still too near, to make a mock at either.

Having demonstrated themselves heroes in action, they would, one and all, be equally heroes in the hour of suffering, or on the bed of lingering death.
Jim, so wounded as to make every movement a pang, had been carefully carried in on a stretcher, and as carefully lifted into a middle berth.
"Good," said one of the men, as he eased him down on his pillow.
"What's good ?" queried Jim.
"The berth; middle berth.

Put you in as easy as into the lowest one: bad lifting such a leg as yours into the top one, and it's the comfortablest of the three when you're in." "O, that's it, is it?
all right; glad I'm here then; getting in didn't hurt more than a flea-bite,"-- saying which Jim turned his face away to put his teeth down hard on a lip already bleeding.