Page:Madame Butterfly; Purple eyes; A gentleman of Japan and a lady; Kito; Glory (1904).djvu/238

 Oshima's troops were forced sullenly back. Ji-Saburo alone remained by the flag he had planted. And he stood at ease and smiled contemptuously at the disordered horde below him. Then Oshima himself took his place beneath it.

"Soldier, we will die here alone rather than retreat," he said.

But Nagaoka also sprang to the side of his commander. With a savage shout his retreating regiment followed him. Again the rampart was won. And again the Chinese swarmed upon the flag and its handful of defenders. Nothing could live in that hell of metal and flame. Savagery, that had not yet learned defeat, raved here as in primeval carnage. The flag went down—lost in the heaps of slain. And Ji-Saburo went down with it.

his old mother might erect a little tablet at the shrine if he were dead—to find him if alive—was the task that Glory undertook. Everybody helped her. But it was