oats
had come up, and were boring into the brigs. In a brief time--it
was then near three o'clock--a white flag, at the end of a
boarding-pike, fluttered over a British deck. D'ri, who had been
sitting awhile, was now up and cheering as he waved his crownless
hat. He had lent his flag, and, in the flurry, some one dropped it
overboard. D'ri saw it fall, and before we could stop him he had
leaped into the sea. I hastened to his help, tossing a rope's end
as he came up, swimming with one arm, the flag in his teeth. I
towed him to the landing-stair and helped him over. Leaning on my
shoulder, he shook out the tattered flag, its white laced with his
own blood.

"Ready t' jump in hell fer thet ol' rag any day," said he, as we
all cheered him.

Each grabbed a tatter of the good flag, pressing hard upon D'ri,
and put it to his lips and kissed it proudly. Then we marched up
and down, D'ri waving it above us--a bloody squad as ever walked,
shouting loudly. D'ri had begun to weaken with loss of blood, so I
coaxed him to go below with me.

The battle was over; a Yankee band was playing near by.

"Perry is coming! Perry is coming!" we heard them shouting above.

A feeble cry that had in it pride and joy and inextinguishable
devotion passed many a fevered lip in the cockpit.

There were those near who had won a better peace, and they lay as a
man that listens to what were now the merest vanity.

Perry came, when the sun was low, with a number of British
officers, and received their surrender on his own bloody deck. I
remember, as they stood by the ruined bulwarks and looked down upon
tokens of wreck and slaughter, a dog began howling dismally in the
cockpit.

XVIII

It was a lucky and a stubborn sea-fight. More blood to the number
I never saw than fell on the _Lawrence_, eighty-three of our
hundred and two men having been killed or laid up for repair. One
has to search a bit for record of a more wicked fire. But we
deserve not all the glory some histories have bestowed, for we had
a larger fleet and better, if fewer, guns. It was, however, a
thing to be proud of, that victory of the young captain. Our men,
of whom many were raw recruits,--farmers and woodsmen,--stood to
their work with splendid valor, and, for us in the North, it came
near being decisive. D'ri and I were so put out of business that
no part of the glory was ours, albeit we were praised in orders for
valor under fire. But for bot