"Helloa!" cried Jim, "that's a dilapidated-looking leg,"--his head out,
looking at it. "Stop a bit!"--body half after the head,--"you just stop
that, and come here and catch hold of a fellow; now put me up there. I
reckon I'll bear hoisting better'n he will, anyway. Ugh! ah! um! owh!
here we are! bully!"
If Jim had been of the fainting or praying order he would certainly have
fainted or prayed; as it was, he said "Bully!" but lay for a while
thereafter still as a mouse.
"Given, you're a brick!" one of the boys was apostrophizing him. Jim
took no notice. "And your man's in, safe and sound"; he turned at that,
and leaned forward, as well as he could, to look at the occupant of his
late bed.
"Jemime!" he cried, when he saw the face. "I say, boys! it's
Ercildoune--Robert--flag--Wagner--hurray--let's give three cheers for
the color-sergeant,--long may he wave!"
The men, propped up or lying down, gave the three cheers with a will,
and then three more; and then, delighted with their performance, three
more after that, Jim winding up the whole with an "a-a-ah,--Tiger!" that
made them all laugh; then relapsing into silence and a hard battle with
pain.
A weary voyage,--a weary journey thereafter to the Northern
hospitals,--some dying by the way, and lowered through the shifting,
restless waves, or buried with hasty yet kindly hands in alien
soil,--accounted strangers and foemen in the land of their birth.
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