Long Jim was almost flat upon his face, but the man, usually so mild and good tempered, was now wholly possessed by the rage of combat. His long thin figure fitted around the sinuosities of the earth, and he seemed to have a curious gliding motion, sliding forward slowly to meet the enemy. The darkness was nothing now to his accustomed eyes, and he sent his bullets with sure aim toward the shadowy forms in the bushes in front of them.
Long Jim forgot everything now but his rifle and the enemy there in the thicket. He slid further and further, still drawing himself over the ground in that terrible semblance of a serpent. Paul, seeing his face, was frightened. "Jim! Jim!" he cried. "Stop!" But Long Jim slid slowly on. Tom Ross said something, but it was lost in the whistling of a cannon shot overhead.
They saw Long Jim stop the next moment, and Paul believed that he heard him utter a little sigh. Long Jim's limbs contracted and straightened out again with a jerk. Then he turned slowly over on his side and lay still, a moment or two, after which he began to writhe violently. At the same time he clapped his hand to his head and it came back red.
"Sol sometimes says I've a thick skull, an' 'ef so it's a good thing," he muttered to himself.
He shook his head again and again, as if to clear it, and crept back to his friends. There he tore off a portion of his deerskin hunting shirt, tied it tightly around the wound, and went on with his firing.
"Don't be too enthusiastic, Jim," said Henry.
"I won't," replied Long Jim, "I'm cured."
Lower crouched the five, taking advantage of the bushes and little hillocks, and sending a bullet every time they saw a flitting figure in the forest in front of them. Behind them they could still hear the roar of the combat on the river. The crackle of the rifles and the muskets was steady in their ears, while now and then the note of a cannon boomed above it, and a solid shot, curving over their heads, whizzed into the thickets. But they paid little attention to the main battle; it was merely a chorus, a background, as it were, for their own corner of the struggle, which absorbed all their energies.
Their fire was so incessant, it was so well aimed, and it stung the allied army so severely, that an increasing force was steadily concentrating in front of them. Nor did they escape wholly unhurt. A bullet grazed Henry's arm and another did the same for Shif'less Sol's shoulder; but neither paid any attention to his wounds, loading and reloading, facing the enemy with undiminished zeal and courage.
Its whole aspect was now a phantom battle to them all. The incessant crash and roaring in their ears, and the smoke and vapor in their nostrils, heated their brains and made everything look unreal. They were but phantoms themselves, and the foes who leaped about in the forest were phantoms, too. Darker and darker the clouds rolled up and the smoke and vapors thickened in the forest, but through the blackness the lines of flame still replied to each other.