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- whipped up his team and finished it. Before hastening to one duty, he
would not leave a prior one undone; and ere helping to whip the
British, for a little practice’ sake, he applied the gad to his oxen.
From the field of the farmer, he rushed to that of the soldier,
mingling his blood with his sweat. While we revel in broadcloth, let us
not forget what we owe to linsey-woolsey.
With other detachments from various quarters, Israel’s regiment
remained encamped for several days in the vicinity of Charlestown. On
the seventeenth of June, one thousand Americans, including the regiment
of Patterson, were set about fortifying Bunker’s Hill. Working all
through the night, by dawn of the following day, the redoubt was thrown
up. But every one knows all about the battle. Suffice it, that Israel
was one of those marksmen whom Putnam harangued as touching the enemy’s
eyes. Forbearing as he was with his oppressive father and unfaithful
love, and mild as he was on the farm, Israel was not the same at Bunker
Hill. Putnam had enjoined the men to aim at the officers; so Israel
aimed between the golden epaulettes, as, in the wilderness, he had
aimed between the branching antlers. With dogged disdain of their foes,
the English grenadiers marched up the hill with sullen slowness; thus
furnishing still surer aims to the muskets which bristled on the
redoubt. Modest Israel was used to aver, that considering his practice
in the woods, he could hardly be regarded as an inexperienced marksman;
hinting, that every shot which the epauletted grenadiers received from
his rifle, would, upon a different occasion, have procured him a
deerskin. And like stricken deers the English, rashly brave as they
were, fled from the opening fire. But the marksman’s ammunition was
expended; a hand-to-hand encounter ensued. Not one American musket in
twenty had a bayonet to it. So, wielding the stock right and left, the
terrible farmers, with hats and coats off, fought their way among the
furred grenadiers, knocking them right and left, as seal-hunters on the
beach knock down with their clubs the Shetland seal. In the dense crowd
and confusion, while Israel’s musket got interlocked, he saw a blade
horizontally menacing his feet from the ground. Thinking some fallen
enemy sought to strike him at the last gasp, dropping his hold on his
musket, he wrenched at the steel, but found that though a brave hand
held it, that hand was powerless for ever. It was some British
officer’s laced sword-arm, cut from the trunk in the act of fighting,
refusing to yield up its blade to the last. At that moment another
sword was aimed at Israel’s head by a living officer. In an instant the
blow was parried by kindred steel, and the assailant fell by a
brother’s weapon, wielded by alien hands. But Israel did not come off
unscathed. A cut on the right arm near the elbow, received in parrying
the officer’s blow, a long slit across the chest, a musket ball buried
in his hip, and another mangling him near the ankle of the same leg,
were the tokens of intrepidity which our Sicinius Dentatus carried from
this memorable field. Nevertheless, with his comrades he succeeded in
reaching Prospect Hill, and from thence was conveyed to the hospital at
Cambridge. The bullet was extracted, his lesser wounds were dressed,
and after much suffering from the fracture of the bone near the ankle,
several pieces of which were extracted by the surgeon, ere long, thanks
to the high health and pure blood of the farmer, Israel rejoined his
regiment when they were throwing up intrenchments on Prospect Hill.
Bunker Hill was now in possession of the foe, who in turn had fortified
it.
On the third of July, Washington arrived from the South to take the
command. Israel witnessed his joyful reception by the huzzaing
companies.
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