The red sunshine struck the three-cornered bastions of the rectangular
fort; a distant bayonet caught the light and twinkled above the
stockaded ditch like a slender point of flame. Outside the works squads
of troops moved, relieving the nearer posts; working details, marching
to and from the sawmill, were evidently busy with the unfinished
abattis; a long, low earth-work, surmounted by a stockade and a
block-house, which. Murphy said, guarded the covered way to the creek,
swarmed with workmen plying pick and shovel and crowbar, while the
sentries walked their beats above, watching the new road which crossed
the creek and ran through the swamp to the sawmill.

"It is strange," said Mount, "that they have not yet finished the fort."

"It is stranger yet," said Elerson, "that they should work so close to
the forest yonder. Look at that fatigue-party drawing logs within
pistol-shot of the woods--"

Before the rifleman could finish, a sentinel on the northwest parapet
fired his musket; the entire scene changed in a twinkling; the
fatigue-party scattered, dropping chains and logs; the workmen sprang
out of ditch and pit, running for the stockade; a man, driving a team of
horses along the new road, jumped up in his wagon and lashed his horses
to a gallop across the rough meadow; and I saw the wagon swaying and
bumping up the slope, followed by a squad of troops on the double.
Behind these ran a dozen men driving some frightened cattle; soldiers
swarmed out on the bastions, soldiers flung open the water gates,
soldiers hung over parapets, gesticulating and pointing westward.

Suddenly from the bastion on the west angle of the fort a shaft of flame
leaped; a majestic cloud buried the parapet, and the deep cannon-thunder
shook the evening air. Above the writhing smoke, now stained pink in the
sunset light, a flag crept jerkily up the halyards of a tall flag-staff,
higher, higher, until it caught the evening wind aloft and floated
lazily out.

"It's the new flag," whispered Elerson, in an awed voice.

We stared at it, fascinated. Never before had the world seen that flag
displayed. Blood-red and silver-white the stripes rippled; the stars on
the blue field glimmered peacefully. There it floated, serene above the
drifting cannon--smoke, the first American flag ever hoisted on earth.
A freshening wind caught it, blowing strong out of the flaming west; the
cannon-smoke eddied, settled, and curled, floating across its folds. F