THE LITTLE SARDINIAN DRUMMER
BY EDMONDO DE AMICIS
Translated by Clou. E. Hard. Copyright, 1898, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.
On the 24th of July, 1848, the first day of the battle of Custoza, sixty soldiers belonging to one of our regiments of infantry, ordered to garrison a lonely house on a height near by, were suddenly attacked by two companies of Austrians, who, assaulting them on several sides, scarcely gave them time to take refuge within the house, and hastily barricade the door, leaving their dead and wounded on the field.
The door being well secured, our soldiers hastened to the windows on the ground floor, as well as to those on the upper floor, and opened a deadly fire on the besiegers, who replied vigorously as they slowly approached in the form of a semicircle.
The sixty Italian soldiers were commanded by two subaltern officers, and by a tall, silent, grim old captain, with white hair and whiskers.
With them was a little Sardinian drummer, a boy scarcely more than fourteen years old, but who did not look even twelve, with his dark, olive skin, and black, deep-set eyes that flashed fire.
From a room on the upper story the captain directed the defense, every order sounding like a pistol shot, his iron countenance showing not the slightest emotion.
The little drummer, pale, but with his feet firmly planted on the table, and holding fast to the walls, stretched out his head and neck to look from the window, and saw through the smoke the Austrians steadily advancing over the fields.
The house was near the top of a very steep hillside, so that but one small high window in the upper story looked out over the crest. The Austrians did not threaten that side, nor was there anybody on the hilltop. The fire was directed against the front and the two sides.
The firing was infernal—a close, heavy hailstorm of balls rained upon the walls and through the broken roof, tearing out the ceiling, shattering the beams, doors, furniture, filling the air with fragments, plastering, and clouds of lime and dust, utensils and broken glass whizzing, clattering over their heads, rebounding from the walls with a noise and clash that made the hair stand on end.
Now and then a soldier stationed at the windows fell inward, and was pushed one side; others staggered from room to room, stanching their wounds with their hands. In the kitchen lay one soldier, pierced through the forehead. The enemy was closing in. At last the captain, until then impassible, began to show signs of uneasiness, and hurriedly left the room, followed by a sergeant. In a few moments the sergeant came rushing back, called the drummer, telling him to follow.
The boy raced up the stairs after him, and entered a dilapidated garret, in which he saw the captain with pencil and paper in hand, leaning on the window sill, and lying on the ground at his feet was a rope belonging to the well.
The captain folded the paper, and, fixing on the boy those cold, gray eyes before which every soldier trembled, said abruptly:
“Drummer!”
The little drummer’s hand went up to his cap.
The captain said:
“Thou art brave.”
The boy’s eyes flashed.
“Yes, captain,” he answered.
“Look down yonder,” said the captain, taking him to the window, “on the ground, near the house of Villafranca, where those bayonets glisten. There is our regiment, motionless. Take this paper, grasp this rope, let yourself down from the window, cross the hill like lightning, rush through the fields, reach our men, and give this paper to the first officer you see. Take off your belt and knapsack.”
The drummer took off his belt and knapsack, and hid the paper in his breast pocket; the sergeant threw out the rope, holding fast one end; the captain helped the boy jump through the window, his back toward the fields.
“Be careful,” said he, “the salvation of this detachment depends on thy valor and thy legs.”
“Trust me, captain,” said the drummer, sliding down.
“Crouch low when you drop,” again said the captain, taking hold of the rope, too.
“Have no fear.”
“God speed thee!”
In a few moments the boy was on the ground, the sergeant drew up the rope, and disappeared, while the captain hastened to the little window, and saw the drummer racing down the hill. He now hoped he would escape unseen, but five or six little clouds of dust rising from the ground warned him that the boy had been discovered by the Austrians, who were firing down from the top of the hill. Those little clouds were the earth torn up by the balls. But the drummer continued running at full speed. After a while the captain exclaimed in consternation: “Dead!” but scarcely was the word out of his mouth when he saw the little drummer rise.
“Ah, it was but a fall!” said he, and breathed again.
The drummer again ran on, but he limped.
“He has sprained his foot,” said the captain.
A little cloud of dust rose here and there around the boy, but always farther from him.
He was beyond their reach. The captain uttered a cry of triumph; but his eyes followed him, tremblingly, for it was a question of minutes. If he did not soon reach the regiment with the note, asking for immediate succor, all his soldiers would be killed, or he would be obliged to surrender, and become a prisoner of war with them.
The boy ran for a while rapidly, then he stopped to limp; again he ran on, but every few minutes he stopped to limp.
“Perhaps a ball has bruised his foot,” thought the captain, and he tremblingly noted all his movements, and in his excitement he talked to the drummer as if he could hear him. Every moment his eyes measured the distance between the boy and the bayonets that glistened below on the plain, in the midst of the golden wheat fields.
Meantime he heard the whistling and the crash of the balls in the rooms below, the voice of command, the shouts of rage of the officers and sergeants; the sharp cries of the wounded, and the noise of broken furniture and crumbling plaster.
“Courage! Valor!” he cried, his eyes following the drummer in the distance. “Forward! Run! Malediction! He stops! Ah, he is up again, forward!”
An officer out of breath comes to tell him that the enemy, without ceasing the fire, wave a white handkerchief, demanding their surrender.
“Let no one answer!” shouts the captain, without taking his eyes from the boy, who was now in the valley, but who no longer ran, and who seemed hopeless of reaching the regiment.
“Forward! Run!” cried the captain with teeth and fists clenched. “Bleed to death, die, unfortunate boy, but reach your destination!” Then he uttered a horrible oath. “Ah, the infamous idler has sat down!”
In fact, up to that moment the boy’s head, that could be seen above the wheat, now disappeared as if he had fallen. After a moment his head was again seen, then he was lost behind the wheat field, and the captain saw him no more.
Then he hastened down. The balls rained, the rooms were full of wounded, some of whom rolled over like drunken men, catching at the furniture: the walls and floors were covered with blood. Dead bodies lay across the threshold; the lieutenant’s arm was broken by a ball. Smoke and powder filled the rooms.
“Courage!” shouted the captain. “Stand to your post! Succor is coming! Courage a little longer!”
The Austrians had approached closer. Their disfigured faces could be seen through the smoke. Through the crash of balls could be heard the savage cries insulting them, demanding their surrender, and threatening to cut their throats. A soldier, terrified, withdrew from the window, and the sergeants again pushed him forward.
The fire of the besieged slackened. Discouragement showed on every face; resistance was no longer possible. The moment came when the Austrians redoubled their efforts, and a voice thundered, at first in German, then in Italian:
“Surrender!”
“No!” shouted the captain from a window. The fire became more deadly, more furious on both sides. Other soldiers fell. There were more than one window without defenders. The fatal moment was imminent. The captain’s voice died away in his throat as he exclaimed:
“They do not come! They do not come!”
And he ran furiously from side to side, brandishing his sabre convulsively, ready to die. Then a sergeant, rushing down from the garret, shouted with stentorian voice:
“They come!”
“Ah, they come!” joyfully shouted the captain.
On hearing that cry all—the well, the wounded, sergeants and officers—crowded to the windows and again the fierceness of the defense was redoubled. In a short while there was noticed among the enemy a species of vacillation and a beginning of disorder. Suddenly the captain gathered a few soldiers together on the lower floor to resist with fixed bayonets the impetuous attack on the outside. Then he went upstairs. Scarcely had he mounted when he heard the sound of hurried footsteps, accompanied by a formidable “Hurrah!” and the pointed hats of the Italian carbineers appeared through the smoke, a squadron at double-quick, a brilliant flash of swords whirled through the air above their heads, their shoulders, their backs; then out charged the little detachment, with fixed bayonets, led by the captain. The enemy wavered, rallied, and at last began to retreat. The field was evacuated, the house was saved, and shortly after two battalions of Italian infantry and two cannon occupied the height.
The captain and the surviving soldiers were incorporated with their regiment, fought again, and the captain was slightly wounded in the hand by a spent ball during the last bayonet charge. The victory on that day was won by the Italians.
But the following day the battle continued. The Italians were conquered, in spite of their heroic resistance, by superior numbers, and on the morning of the 26th they were in full retreat toward the Mincio.
The captain, though wounded, marched at the head of his company, weary and silent, arriving at sunset at Goito on the Mincio. He immediately sought his lieutenant, who, with his arm broken, had been picked up by the ambulance, and who must have arrived before he did. They pointed out to him a church in which the field hospital had been installed. He went there, the church was filled with the wounded lying in two rows of cots, and mattresses laid on the floor. Two physicians and several practitioners were busily coming and going, and nothing was heard but groans and stifled cries.
Scarcely had the captain entered when he stopped and glanced around in search of his subordinate.
At that moment he heard, near by, his name called faintly:
“Captain!”
He turned. It was the little drummer. He was stretched upon a wooden cot, covered up to the neck with a coarse old red and white check window curtain, his arms lying outside, pale and thin, but with his eyes burning like two coals of fire.
“What! is it thou?” asked the captain in a surprised, abrupt manner. “Bravo! thou hast fulfilled thy duty.”
“I did all that was possible,” replied the drummer.
“Art thou wounded?” asked the captain, glancing around at the beds, in search of his lieutenant.
“What could you expect?” replied the boy, who was eager to speak of the honor of being wounded for the first time, otherwise he would not have dared to open his lips before his captain.
“I ran as long as I could with my head down, but, though I crouched, the Austrians saw me immediately. I would have arrived twenty minutes earlier had they not wounded me. Fortunately I met a captain of the general’s staff, to whom I gave the note. But it was with great effort I got along after that. I was dying with thirst. I was afraid I could not arrive in time. I cried with rage, thinking that every minute’s delay sent one of ours to the other world. But at last I did all I could. I am content. But look, captain, and excuse me, you are bleeding!”
In fact, from the palm of the badly bandaged hand the blood was flowing.
“Do you wish me to tighten the bandage, captain? Let me have it for a moment.”
The captain gave him his left hand, and stretched out his right hand to help tie the knot; but scarcely had the little fellow risen from the pillow when he turned pale, and had to lie back again.
“Enough! enough!” said the captain, looking at him, and withdrawing his bandaged hand, which the drummer wished to retain. “Take care of yourself instead of thinking of others, for slight wounds, if neglected, may have grave consequences.”
The little drummer shook his head.
“But thou,” said the captain, looking attentively at him, “thou must have lost much blood to be so weak.”
“Lost much blood?” repeated the boy, smiling. “Something more than blood. Look!” and he threw down the coverlet The captain recoiled in horror.
The boy had but one leg; the left leg had been amputated above the knee. The stump was wrapped in bloody cloths.
Just then a small, fat army physician in shirt-sleeves passed.
“Ah, captain,” said he rapidly, pointing out the little drummer; “there is an unfortunate case. That leg could have been easily saved had he not forced it so much, caused inflammation; it was necessary to amputate it. But he is brave, I assure you. He shed not a tear, nor uttered a plaint. I was proud, while operating, to think he was an Italian boy, my word of honor. Faith, he comes of good stock.”
And he went on his way.
The captain wrinkled his bushy white eyebrows, and looked fixedly at the little drummer while covering him up with the coverlet. Then, slowly, almost unconsciously, yet still looking at him, his hand went to his képi, which he took off.
“Captain!” exclaimed the astonished boy. “What, captain, for me?”
Then that rough soldier, who had never spoken a gentle word to an inferior, replied in a soft and exceedingly affectionate voice:
“I am but a captain, thou art a hero.”
Then he threw his arms about the little drummer and kissed him with all his heart.
LULU’S TRIUMPH
BY MATILDA SERAO
Matilda Serao was born in 1856 at Patras, Greece. She is Italy’s foremost woman writer, adopting a career very unusual with her countrywomen. Up to her thirtieth year she contributed sketches to periodicals.
In her early work she distinctly shows the influence of French realists like Zola. Few writers know Balzac as she does. Later she developed a liking for the psychological problem novel, and later still, in “Christ’s Country,” she seems to have joined that neomystic school represented in Italy by Fogazzaro, especially in his “Saint.” Her style is slovenly, and, though not strong-minded, more like that of a man. But her stories are told with great spirit. The heroine of one of her very latest stories is an American, but she does not at all sympathise with the American reader’s “absurd wish for happy endings.” “Lulu’s Triumph” combines the singular merits of a “happy ending” according to the American idea, with a sad ending according to the author’s.
