wreck, where she saved the pilot, John Collins, and nine of the ship's
company. While on his way Nields, who was but a lad, did one of those
acts, simple in intention, which appeal strongly to the feelings and
imagination and indicate the calm self-possession of the doer. He was
steering the boat himself, and his captain, who was watching, saw him,
after pulling some fifty yards, look up and back to see if the flag
was flying; missing it, he stooped down, took it out of the cover in
which it is habitually kept and shipped it, unfurled, in its place in
the boat before the eyes of friends and foes. His heroic and merciful
errand was not accomplished without the greatest risk, greater than he
himself knew; for not only did he pass under the continued and furious
fire of the fort and the fleet, but the ensign of the forecastle
division of the Hartford, seeing the boat without a flag and knowing
nothing of its object, but having torpedoes uppermost in his mind,
connected its presence with them, trained one of his hundred-pounders
upon it,[33] and was about to pull the lockstring when one of the
ship's company caught his arm, saying: "For God's sake, don't fire! it
is one of our own boats!" The Hartford had passed on when Nields had
picked up the survivors, and, after putting them aboard the Winnebago,
he pulled down to the Oneida, where he served during the rest of the
action. Two officers and five men had also escaped in one of the
Tecumseh's boats, which was towing alongside, and four swam to the
fort, where they were made prisoners; so that twenty-one were saved
out of a complement of over one hundred souls.

Meanwhile the Brooklyn was lying bows on to the fort, undergoing a
raking fire and backing down upon the starboard bow of the Richmond,
whose engines were stopped, but the vessel drifting up with the young
flood-tide. Her captain, seeing a collision in such critical
circumstances imminent, gave the order to back hard both his own ship
and her consort; fearing that, if the four became entangled, not only
would they suffer damage themselves, but, if sunk by the fire of the
fort, would block the channel to the rest of the squadron. As she
backed, the Richmond's bow fell off to port, bringing her starboard
broadside fairly toward the fort and batteries, on which she kept up a
steady and rapid fire, at a distance of from three hundred to one
hundred and fifty yards, driving the enemy out of the water-battery
and silenci