“Sol sometimes says I’ve a thick skull, an’ ’ef so it’s a good thing,” he muttered to himself.

He shook his head again and again, as if to clear it, and crept back to his friends.  There he tore off a portion of his deerskin hunting shirt, tied it tightly around the wound, and went on with his firing.

“Don’t be too enthusiastic, Jim,” said Henry.

“I won’t,” replied Long Jim, “I’m cured.”

Lower crouched the five, taking advantage of the bushes and little hillocks, and sending a bullet every time they saw a flitting figure in the forest in front of them.  Behind them they could still hear the roar of the combat on the river.  The crackle of the rifles and the muskets was steady in their ears, while now and then the note of a cannon boomed above it, and a solid shot, curving over their heads, whizzed into the thickets.  But they paid little attention to the main battle; it was merely a chorus, a background, as it were, for their own corner of the struggle, which absorbed all their energies.

Their fire was so incessant, it was so well aimed, and it stung the allied army so severely, that an increasing force was steadily concentrating in front of them.  Nor did they escape wholly unhurt.  A bullet grazed Henry’s arm and another did the same for Shif’less Sol’s shoulder; but neither paid any attention to his wounds, loading and reloading, facing the enemy with undiminished zeal and courage.

Its whole aspect was now a phantom battle to them all.  The incessant crash and roaring in their ears, and the smoke and vapor in their nostrils, heated their brains and made everything look unreal.  They were but phantoms themselves, and the foes who leaped about in the forest were phantoms, too.  Darker and darker the clouds rolled up and the smoke and vapors thickened in the forest, but through the blackness the lines of flame still replied to each other.

Paul’s excitement was so great that he could not keep himself down.  He was burning with fever, but passion seemed to be departing from him.  He thought that, if they were all to die, it was a privilege to die together.  He saw now the deep cool woods, a beautiful lake, and an island enclosed within it, like a green gem in a blue setting.  Paul’s thoughts, and his vision with them, were wandering into the past.

“Steady, Paul, steady!” said Henry.  But Paul saw nothing now.  A bullet, singing merrily, gave him a leaden kiss, and he sank down very gently, lying upon one arm, the red fast dyeing his buckskin hunting shirt.

Henry gave a cry when he saw Paul fall, and bent anxiously over his friend.  The light was faint, but the bullet seemed to have gone entirely through the youth.  Henry put his ear to his chest, and could hear his heart still beating, though faintly.

“Hold ’em back!” he shouted to his friends, “and I’ll help Paul!”