Sea of Glory

killed the man with his pistol. As he ran back to take up his position beside Underwood, he was struck in the back of the head by a short club and fell face-first into the water. He was instantly surrounded by natives, who began stripping off his clothes.
    As the rest of the men ran for the boats, only Clark and one other sailor remained to fight beside the two officers. Out of the corner of his eye, Clark saw a native, about fifteen feet away, with a spear in his hand. “[M]y ignorance of the force of these missiles very nearly cost me my life,” he later wrote. “It came like a flash of lightning, struck me full in the face, tearing my upper lip into three pieces, loosening my upper fore teeth, and glancing out of my mouth, passed through the left arm of Mr. Underwood.” Incredibly, Clark was able to raise his musket and shoot the native through the head before another native came up from behind and knocked him senseless into the water.
    The bite of the saltwater on his cut and bleeding face revived Clark, and he was soon back on his feet, only to see Underwood succumb to a blow to the back of the head. Clark did his best to get to Underwood, who was now lying on his left side and using his right arm to fend off the natives’ clubs, but Clark was hit on the head and shoulder and once again fell to his knees. He could see blood streaming from Underwood’s mouth, nose, and ears; he could also see that a huge native with an upraised club was standing over the fallen lieutenant. Finding reserves of energy he didn’t know he possessed, Clark sprang to his feet and attacked the native from behind, stabbing him three times with his knife. He then stooped down and pulled Underwood’s head out of the water. “Tell her,” whispered Underwood, who had been married just a few weeks before the Expedition sailed, “that I loved her until the last moment.”
    An eerie change came over the lieutenant’s face. “[H]is eyes flashed, and he seemed for a moment to recover himself,” Clark remembered, “his countenance gleaming in all the fierceness of the war spirit; he tried to speak, but his mouth was so filled with blood that I could not understand what he wished to say.” Clark later realized that Underwood had seen a native approaching him from behind, and “giving him that keen, piercing look of defiance, in the last agonies of death, he wished to warn me of the danger.” But it was too late. The last thing Clark remembered was an explosion to the head, as if a cannon had been fired a few inches away, then all was blackness.
    As soon as the fighting had broken out, Alden and Emmons headed for shore. Riding the newly risen tide, with a fresh breeze behind them, they sailed for the scene of the conflict. They soon came upon the Leopard, her terrified crew pushing the boat out into the water as they shouted that Underwood was dead. “The boats had not yet grounded,” Alden wrote, “but we immediately jumped overboard, and with all speed hastened to the beach.” They were now gripped by the fear that the natives would carry away Underwood’s body before they could retrieve it.
    But before Alden reached the shore, he came upon a man staggering in the shallows, his face a horrible mess of blood and mangled flesh. It was Joseph Clark. Even as the natives “clubbed and speared us until they supposed that there could be no life in us,” Clark had somehow managed to get back on his feet. He was in a state of shock and would have no memory of his actions, but others would later tell him of how he had walked among the natives, his torn lip hanging from his face as he laughed and sang. The natives didn’t know what to make of this gruesome apparition and made no further efforts to harm him.
    As the others took Clark back to the boats, Alden forged ahead. “When I reached the beach nothing living was to be seen.” He found Underwood, stripped of most of his clothing, lying on his back on the shore. Alden cradled his friend’s head in his arms and realized that the back of Underwood’s skull had been mashed to jelly. “Your poor, poor wife,” Alden murmured. “Joe, little is she thinking of this!”
    He then turned and saw for the first time the body of Wilkes Henry, almost completely naked. Unlike Underwood, Henry seemed virtually untouched. (It would later be established that he had drowned soon after being knocked unconscious.) By this time Emmons and the men had arrived. The sailors were “excited to