Chapter 3 - Page 2

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