"Heavens! Whom do you suppose I'm talking about? I came up here for the express purpose of getting even with them!"

"They are a long distance away, Captain. We must transport our artillery up to Mount X [censor]; there we'll go for them."

"And have you got the _filovia_ [aerial railway] in working order for that purpose?"

"Yes, indeed! They have been working on it for three days."

"And the company?"

"They are intrenched in the hut on Mount X with the battalion."

"It will take four good hours to get there."

"Even more, Captain."

"And how will I manage to tow along this lump of a Pinocchio who is half dead with mountain-sickness?"

"Pinocchio?"

"Where is he?"

"Pull the rope and take him off my back; he has tired me out."

Pinocchio, who was in a state of great weakness and curiously sleepy, felt himself lifted up and whirled around to the outburst of loud laughter. It seemed to him that something slipped down his throat which burned and made him cough and sneeze ... then he thought he was stretched out on a bed that was rather hard, but covered with warm and heavy coverings; then ... he experienced a strange feeling of comfort disturbed only by a long, monotonous, persistent humming.

If he had been able to notice what was happening to him he would either have died of fright or he would have believed himself in the very hands of G.o.d. Fastened to the gun-carriage of a six-inch cannon, suspended in the car of a _filovia_, he was traveling over the abyss which separates two of our giant Alps. Below him was a sea of clouds, above the beautiful blue sky, all about him the gleam of white snow, and on the snow here and there a group of little gray points, like grains of sand lost in all this immensity. Those were our Alpine troops, the dear big boys who were laughing at the joke played on Pinocchio, and defying serenely all the obstacles that nature opposed to their victorious advance on Italian soil which Austria's power had for so many years disputed with us.

When Pinocchio regained his senses he found himself lying on the ground wrapped up in coverlets and warm as a bun just out of the oven.

Above his head dangled horizontally the huge basket from which he had been flung by the shock of its sudden halt, and which swung on the steel cables of the _filovia_ as if it were weary of being up there and eager to set about its job. All about was the gleam of the snow, even though the light was growing paler every moment. I bet you a soldo against a lira what hour it was. But Pinocchio guessed it from the odor of cooking which sweetened the air all about, an odor which would have brought a dead dyspeptic to life. He sniffed the air like a bloodhound, rolled his eyes in every direction, in all corners, to discover the spot whence came the delicious fragrance, but couldn't see anything but snow, nothing, not even a curl of distant smoke. He was so hungry that he thought he would faint.

"I am dreaming with eyes open. How is it possible that there should be in this desert pastry covered with caramel sauce? Because I know I am not mistaken ... the odor I smell is just that. If I had only a piece of bread, by means of my nose and by means of my mouth I could fool myself into believing that I was dining magnificently, but ..."

But the odor affected him so strongly that he had to get up to limber up his muscles. He had scarcely got to his feet when a strange thing happened--from the very spot where he had been lying a puff of smoke rose gently upward, and this smoke had precisely the odor of pastry covered with caramel sauce.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Pinocchio crossed his hands over his empty stomach and stood for a moment pondering. Never in all his life had he had presented to him so difficult a problem as this to solve. He thought and thought, and, like Galileo, had recourse to the experimental method. He knelt down in the snow and began to sc.r.a.pe it away with his hands on the spot where his body, covered by the latest issue of the newspaper, had left an impression. The smell of caramel sauce kept growing more fragrant, and Pinocchio's tongue licked the end of his nose so solemnly that he would have made the inventor of handkerchiefs blush with shame.

Suddenly a deep opening appeared under the snow. Pinocchio stuck his arms in up to the elbows and uttered a shriek of terror. His hands and wrists were held as in a fiery vise and his arms were pulled so violently that he was jerked face down on the earth and his nose stuck into the snow.

If he had not been in such an uncomfortable position and had been able to look over his shoulder he would have seen four devils of Alpine troopers advancing very quietly, guns pointed and bayonets fixed. It could be only a starved Austrian who would attempt to enter through the dugout's little window cut through the snow into the officers'

mess, and they intended giving him a fine welcome. A corporal with a reddish beard which hung down to his stomach stood two paces away, ready to give him a bayonet thrust that would have run him through like a snipe on a spit, but suddenly he focused his eyes on a certain point, advanced on his hands and knees, and began to read the "Latest News" which he had caught sight of in the seat of Pinocchio's trousers.

The Alpine troops are the bravest soldiers in the world; if any one doubts this let him ask the hunters of that foolish gallows-bird of an emperor; but they are not all well educated, and for this reason Corporal Scotimondo, as soon as he had spelled out the interesting headline, signaled to his comrades to advance cautiously.

You can't have the faintest idea of how important a newspaper becomes, even if it is not a particularly late one, up there among those snow-clad peaks where our soldiers were fighting for a greater Italy. So this editorial, which contained the news of the miraculous conquest of the Col di Lana, deserved to be preserved in the archives among the masterpieces of our glory, instead of in the seat of Pinocchio's trousers.

As I have told you, Corporal Scotimondo could scarcely spell, but among his three comrades Private Draghetta was looked upon as a genius, because as a civilian he had been a clerk in Cuneo. But Draghetta, who could see the Austrians a mile off and when he saw them never failed to knock them over with a shot from his gun, was nearsighted as a mole, and when he wanted to read had to rub his nose into the print.

When Pinocchio felt Draghetta's nose tickle him he began to kick like a donkey stung by a gadfly.

"Hold him tight; tie him. We've taken the Col di Lana! The Col di Lana is ours!"

"Really?"

"Is it true?"

"Read it, Draghetta ... don't be afraid ... I'll hold him for you."

Scotimondo sat astride Pinocchio's back and squeezed him with his knees so hard that he took his breath away.

"'Yesterday our brave Alpine troops, supported by infantry regiments, by means of a brilliant attack gained the highest summit of the Col di Lana, which is now safely in our possession.' ... Hurrah!"

"Hurrah for Italy!"

"Hurrah for the King!"

They were crazy with joy and danced about on the snow like fiends, throwing their plumed hats up into the air, waving their guns above their heads. Suddenly, just as if they had risen from the ground, a hundred soldiers appeared and surrounded them.

"What is it?"

"What has happened?"

"The Col di Lana is ours!"

"Hurrah for Italy!"

"Who told you so?"

"Where did you hear it?"

"In the latest news of the _Corriere_."

"Are you certain?"

"Where did you find it?"

"If you don't believe it, ask Draghetta."

All this noise, this rushing out of the trenches and the soldiers staying in the open, was against regulations, so that Lieutenant Sfrizzoli couldn't let it pa.s.s without giving vent to one of his usual fits of rage. Red as a radish, he rushed toward Draghetta, shoving apart the group of rejoicing Alpine soldiers, and stopped in front of him, legs wide apart, and with fists clenched.

"Is it you, Draghetta, who have set the camp in such an uproar?"

"Not I, sir; it is the Col di Lana."

"What? What? What?"