(_Monthly Story._)
On the first day of the battle of Custoza, on the 24th of July, 1848,
about sixty soldiers, belonging to an infantry regiment of our army, who
had been sent to an elevation to occupy an isolated house, suddenly
found themselves assaulted by two companies of Austrian soldiers, who,
showering them with bullets from various quarters, hardly gave them time
to take refuge in the house and to barricade the doors, after leaving
several dead and wounded on the field. Having barred the doors, our men
ran in haste to the windows of the ground floor and the first story, and
began to fire brisk discharges at their assailants, who, approaching
gradually, ranged in a semicircle, made vigorous reply. The sixty
Italian soldiers were commanded by two non-commissioned officers and a
captain, a tall, dry, austere old man, with white hair and mustache; and
with them there was a Sardinian drummer-boy, a lad of a little over
fourteen, who did not look twelve, small, with an olive-brown
complexion, and two small, deep, sparkling eyes. The captain directed
the defence from a room on the first floor, launching commands that
seemed like pistol-shots, and no sign of emotion was visible on his iron
countenance. The drummer-boy, a little pale, but firm on his legs, had
jumped upon a table, and was holding fast to the wall and stretching out
his neck in order to gaze out of the windows, and athwart the smoke on
the fields he saw the white uniforms of the Austrians, who were slowly
advancing. The house was situated at the summit of a steep declivity,
and on the side of the slope it had but one high window, corresponding
to a chamber in the roof: therefore the Austrians did not threaten the
house from that quarter, and the slope was free; the fire beat only upon
the front and the two ends.
But it was an infernal fire, a hailstorm of leaden bullets, which split
the walls on the outside, ground the tiles to powder, and in the
interior cracked ceilings, furniture, window-frames, and door-frames,
sending splinters of wood flying through the air, and clouds of plaster,
and fragments of kitchen utensils and glass, whizzing, and rebounding,
and breaking everything with a noise like the crushing of a skull. From
time to time one of the soldiers who were firing from the windows fell
crashing back to the floor, and was dragged to one side. Some staggered
from room to room, pressing their hands on their wounds. There was
already one dead body in the kitchen, with its forehead cleft. The
semicircle of the enemy was drawing together.
At a certain point the captain, hitherto impassive, was seen to make a
gesture of uneasiness, and to leave the room with huge strides, followed
by a sergeant. Three minutes later the sergeant returned on a run, and
summoned the drummer-boy, making him a sign to follow. The lad followed
him at a quick pace up the wooden staircase, and entered with him into
a bare garret, where he saw the captain writing with a pencil on a sheet
of paper, as he leaned against the little window; and on the floor at
his feet lay the well-rope.
The captain folded the sheet of paper, and said sharply, as he fixed his
cold gray eyes, before which all the soldiers trembled, on the boy:--
"Drummer!"
The drummer-boy put his hand to his visor.