Yet, in the midst of Farragut's grave anxieties about the great issues touching his fleet, the drowning men on board the Tecumseh had not been forgotten, and, while still fettered by the Brooklyn's action, he hailed Captain Jouett, of the Metacomet,[32] to know if he had not a boat that he could send to save them. Jouett, having seen the disaster, and not having the other cares on his mind, had by a few instants forestalled the admiral, and the boat was about leaving the port quarter of the Metacomet, in charge of Ensign H.C. Nields, an officer of the Volunteer Navy. She pulled round under the Hartford's stern and broadside, across the bows of the Brooklyn, toward the wreck, where she saved the pilot, John Collins, and nine of the ship's company. While on his way Nields, who was but a lad, did one of those acts, simple in intention, which appeal strongly to the feelings and imagination and indicate the calm self-possession of the doer. He was steering the boat himself, and his captain, who was watching, saw him, after pulling some fifty yards, look up and back to see if the flag was flying; missing it, he stooped down, took it out of the cover in which it is habitually kept and shipped it, unfurled, in its place in the boat before the eyes of friends and foes. His heroic and merciful errand was not accomplished without the greatest risk, greater than he himself knew; for not only did he pass under the continued and furious fire of the fort and the fleet, but the ensign of the forecastle division of the Hartford, seeing the boat without a flag and knowing nothing of its object, but having torpedoes uppermost in his mind, connected its presence with them, trained one of his hundred-pounders upon it,[33] and was about to pull the lockstring when one of the ship's company caught his arm, saying: "For God's sake, don't fire! it is one of our own boats!" The Hartford had passed on when Nields had picked up the survivors, and, after putting them aboard the Winnebago, he pulled down to the Oneida, where he served during the rest of the action. Two officers and five men had also escaped in one of the Tecumseh's boats, which was towing alongside, and four swam to the fort, where they were made prisoners; so that twenty-one were saved out of a complement of over one hundred souls.