The boy's eyes flashed.
"Yes, captain," he replied.
"Look down there," said the captain, pushing him to the window; "on the
plain, near the houses of Villafranca, where there is a gleam of
bayonets. There stand our troops, motionless. You are to take this
billet, tie yourself to the rope, descend from the window, get down that
slope in an instant, make your way across the fields, arrive at our men,
and give the note to the first officer you see. Throw off your belt and
knapsack."
The drummer took off his belt and knapsack and thrust the note into his
breast pocket; the sergeant flung the rope out of the window, and held
one end of it clutched fast in his hands; the captain helped the lad to
clamber out of the small window, with his back turned to the landscape.
"Now look out," he said; "the salvation of this detachment lies in your
courage and in your legs."
"Trust to me, Signor Captain," replied the drummer-boy, as he let
himself down.
"Bend over on the slope," said the captain, grasping the rope, with the
sergeant.
"Never fear."
"God aid you!"
In a few moments the drummer-boy was on the ground; the sergeant drew in
the rope and disappeared; the captain stepped impetuously in front of
the window and saw the boy flying down the slope.
He was already hoping that he had succeeded in escaping unobserved, when
five or six little puffs of powder, which rose from the earth in front
of and behind the lad, warned him that he had been espied by the
Austrians, who were firing down upon him from the top of the elevation:
these little clouds were thrown into the air by the bullets. But the
drummer continued to run at a headlong speed. All at once he fell to the
earth. "He is killed!" roared the captain, biting his fist. But before
he had uttered the word he saw the drummer spring up again. "Ah, only a
fall," he said to himself, and drew a long breath. The drummer, in fact,
set out again at full speed; but he limped. "He has turned his ankle,"
thought the captain. Again several cloudlets of powder smoke rose here
and there about the lad, but ever more distant. He was safe. The captain
uttered an exclamation of triumph. But he continued to follow him with
his eyes, trembling because it was an affair of minutes: if he did not
arrive yonder in the shortest possible time with that billet, which
called for instant succor, either all his soldiers would be killed or he
should be obliged to surrender himself a prisoner with them.
The boy ran rapidly for a space, then relaxed his pace and limped, then
resumed his course, but grew constantly more fatigued, and every little
while he stumbled and paused.
"Perhaps a bullet has grazed him," thought the captain, and he noted all
his movements, quivering with excitement; and he encouraged him, he
spoke to him, as though he could hear him; he measured incessantly, with
a flashing eye, the space intervening between the fleeing boy and that
gleam of arms which he could see in the distance on the plain amid the
fields of grain gilded by the sun. And meanwhile he heard the whistle
and the crash of the bullets in the rooms beneath, the imperious and
angry shouts of the sergeants and the officers, the piercing laments of
the wounded, the ruin of furniture, and the fall of rubbish.
"On! courage!" he shouted, following the far-off drummer with his
glance. "Forward! run! He halts, that cursed boy! Ah, he resumes his
course!"
An officer came panting to tell him that the enemy, without slackening
their fire, were flinging out a white flag to hint at a surrender.
"Don't reply to them!" he cried, without detaching his eyes from the
boy, who was already on the plain, but who was no longer running, and
who seemed to be dragging himself along with difficulty.
"Go! run!" said the captain, clenching his teeth and his fists; "let
them kill you; die, you rascal, but go!" Then he uttered a horrible
oath. "Ah, the infamous poltroon! he has sat down!" In fact, the boy,
whose head he had hitherto been able to see projecting above a field of
grain, had disappeared, as though he had fallen; but, after the lapse of
a minute, his head came into sight again; finally, it was lost behind
the hedges, and the captain saw it no more.
Then he descended impetuously; the bullets were coming in a tempest; the
rooms were encumbered with the wounded, some of whom were whirling round
like drunken men, and clutching at the furniture; the walls and floor
were bespattered with blood; corpses lay across the doorways; the
lieutenant had had his arm shattered by a ball; smoke and clouds of dust
enveloped everything.
"Courage!" shouted the captain. "Stand firm at your post! Succor is on
the way! Courage for a little while longer!"
The Austrians had approached still nearer: their contorted faces were
already visible through the smoke, and amid the crash of the firing
their savage and offensive shouts were audible, as they uttered insults,
suggested a surrender, and threatened slaughter. Some soldiers were
terrified, and withdrew from the windows; the sergeants drove them
forward again. But the fire of the defence weakened; discouragement made
its appearance on all faces. It was not possible to protract the
resistance longer. At a given moment the fire of the Austrians
slackened, and a thundering voice shouted, first in German and then in
Italian, "Surrender!"
"No!" howled the captain from a window.
And the firing recommenced more fast and furious on both sides. More
soldiers fell. Already more than one window was without defenders. The
fatal moment was near at hand. The captain shouted through his teeth, in
a strangled voice, "They are not coming! they are not coming!" and
rushed wildly about, twisting his sword about in his convulsively
clenched hand, and resolved to die; when a sergeant descending from the
garret, uttered a piercing shout, "They are coming!" "They are coming!"
repeated the captain, with a cry of joy.
At that cry all, well and wounded, sergeants and officers, rushed to the
windows, and the resistance became fierce once more. A few moments later
a sort of uncertainty was noticeable, and a beginning of disorder among
the foe. Suddenly the captain hastily collected a little troop in the
room on the ground floor, in order to make a sortie with fixed bayonets.
Then he flew up stairs. Scarcely had he arrived there when they heard a
hasty trampling of feet, accompanied by a formidable hurrah, and saw
from the windows the two-pointed hats of the Italian carabineers
advancing through the smoke, a squadron rushing forward at great speed,
and a lightning flash of blades whirling in the air, as they fell on
heads, on shoulders, and on backs. Then the troop darted out of the
door, with bayonets lowered; the enemy wavered, were thrown into
disorder, and turned their backs; the field was left unincumbered, the
house was free, and a little later two battalions of Italian infantry
and two cannons occupied the eminence.
The captain, with the soldiers that remained to him, rejoined his
regiment, went on fighting, and was slightly wounded in the left hand by
a bullet on the rebound, in the final assault with bayonets.
The day ended with the victory on our side.
But on the following day, the conflict having begun again, the Italians
were overpowered by the overwhelming numbers of the Austrians, in spite
of a valorous resistance, and on the morning of the 27th they sadly
retreated towards the Mincio.
The captain, although wounded, made the march on foot with his soldiers,
weary and silent, and, arrived at the close of the day at Goito, on the
Mincio, he immediately sought out his lieutenant, who had been picked up
with his arm shattered, by our ambulance corps, and who must have
arrived before him. He was directed to a church, where the field
hospital had been installed in haste. Thither he betook himself. The
church was full of wounded men, ranged in two lines of beds, and on
mattresses spread on the floor; two doctors and numerous assistants were
going and coming, busily occupied; and suppressed cries and groans were
audible.
No sooner had the captain entered than he halted and cast a glance
around, in search of his officer.
At that moment he heard himself called in a weak voice,--"Signor
Captain!" He turned round. It was his drummer-boy. He was lying on a cot
bed, covered to the breast with a coarse window curtain, in red and
white squares, with his arms on the outside, pale and thin, but with
eyes which still sparkled like black gems.
"Are you here?" asked the captain, amazed, but still sharply. "Bravo!
You did your duty."
"I did all that I could," replied the drummer-boy.
"Were you wounded?" said the captain, seeking with his eyes for his
officer in the neighboring beds.
"What could one expect?" said the lad, who gained courage by speaking,
expressing the lofty satisfaction of having been wounded for the first
time, without which he would not have dared to open his mouth in the
presence of this captain; "I had a fine run, all bent over, but suddenly
they caught sight of me. I should have arrived twenty minutes earlier if
they had not hit me. Luckily, I soon came across a captain of the staff,
to whom I gave the note. But it was hard work to get down after that
caress! I was dying of thirst. I was afraid that I should not get there
at all. I wept with rage at the thought that at every moment of delay
another man was setting out yonder for the other world. But enough! I
did what I could. I am content. But, with your permission, captain, you
should look to yourself: you are losing blood."
Several drops of blood had in fact trickled down on the captain's
fingers from his imperfectly bandaged palm.
"Would you like to have me give the bandage a turn, captain? Hold it
here a minute."
The captain held out his left hand, and stretched out his right to help
the lad to loosen the knot and to tie it again; but no sooner had the
boy raised himself from his pillow than he turned pale and was obliged
to support his head once more.
"That will do, that will do," said the captain, looking at him and
withdrawing his bandaged hand, which the other tried to retain. "Attend
to your own affairs, instead of thinking of others, for things that are
not severe may become serious if they are neglected."
The drummer-boy shook his head.
"But you," said the captain, observing him attentively, "must have lost
a great deal of blood to be as weak as this."
"Must have lost a great deal of blood!" replied the boy, with a smile.
"Something else besides blood: look here." And with one movement he drew
aside the coverlet.
The captain started back a pace in horror.
The lad had but one leg. His left leg had been amputated above the knee;
the stump was swathed in blood-stained cloths.
At that moment a small, plump, military surgeon passed, in his
shirt-sleeves. "Ah, captain," he said, rapidly, nodding towards the
drummer, "this is an unfortunate case; there is a leg that might have
been saved if he had not exerted himself in such a crazy manner--that
cursed inflammation! It had to be cut off away up here. Oh, but he's a
brave lad. I can assure you! He never shed a tear, nor uttered a cry!
He was proud of being an Italian boy, while I was performing the
operation, upon my word of honor. He comes of a good race, by Heavens!"
And away he went, on a run.
The captain wrinkled his heavy white brows, gazed fixedly at the
drummer-boy, and spread the coverlet over him again, and slowly, then as
though unconsciously, and still gazing intently at him, he raised his
hand to his head, and lifted his cap.
"Signor Captain!" exclaimed the boy in amazement. "What are you doing,
captain? To me!"
And then that rough soldier, who had never said a gentle word to an
inferior, replied in an indescribably sweet and affectionate voice, "I
am only a captain; you are a hero."
Then he threw himself with wide-spread arms upon the drummer-boy, and
kissed him three times upon the heart.