The last part of the march was the worst of all. They were now near the fort, but they still had to wade through a sheet of water four miles across. Clark took the lead and plunged in. The rest, shivering, followed. A few looked as though their strength and courage had given out. Clark saw this, and calling to Captain Bowman,--one of the bravest of his officers,--he ordered him to kill the first man who refused to go forward. At last, with numbed hands and chattering teeth, all got across, but some of them were so weak and blue with cold that they could not take another step, but fell flat on their faces in the mud. These men were so nearly dead that no fire seemed to warm them. Clark ordered two strong men to lift each of these poor fellows up, hold him between them by the arms, and run him up and down until he began to get warm. By doing this he saved every one. 167. Clark takes the fort; what we got by his victory; his grave.--After a long and desperate fight Clark took Fort Vincennes and hoisted the Stars and Stripes over it in triumph. The British never got it back again. Most of the Indians were now glad to make peace, and to promise to behave themselves. By Clark's victory the Americans got possession of the whole western wilderness up to Detroit. When the Revolutionary War came to an end, the British did not want to give us any part of America beyond the thirteen states on the Atlantic coast. But we said, The whole west, clear to the Mississippi, is ours; we fought for it; we took it; we hoisted our flag over its forts, and _we mean to keep it_. We did keep it. There is a grass-grown grave in a burial-ground in Louisville, Kentucky, which has a small headstone marked with the letters G. R. C., and nothing more; that is the grave of General George Rogers Clark, the man who did more than any one else to get the west for us--or what was called the west a hundred years ago. [Illustration: CLARK'S GRAVE.] 168. Summary.--During the Revolutionary War George Rogers Clark of Virginia, with a small number of men, captured Fort Kaskaskia in Illinois, and Fort Vincennes in Indiana. Clark drove out the British from that part of the country, and when peace was made, we kept the west--that is, the country as far as the Mississippi River--as part of the United States. Had it not been for him and his brave men, we might not have got it.