"I have come to volunteer."
"Why not? I like the idea ... you, too, will take your half-hour's turn, but this doesn't help me solve my problem of ..."
"But I have come to volunteer for the whole night."
"Really? Are you in earnest?"
"Yes, indeed. You see, Corporal Squassamondo, I should have liked to remind you this morning early that I have a wooden leg, but I prefer to tell you now. Wood doesn't freeze and so I can stand guard for ten hours even without any danger, if you only give me enough to cover myself with and plenty to eat."
"And the other leg?"
"Ciampanella has told me that storks sleep all night standing on one leg and don't fall over. I am a man 'that's not a man,' but if I were no more good than a stork I shouldn't have got a wooden leg on the battle-field."
The little lesson had sunk in and Scotimondo felt it like a pinch on the shins. He tried to be furious, but didn't succeed. He let out a terrible "Good Heavens!" then was overcome with emotion, caught Pinocchio in his arms, pressed him to himself, and kissed him again and again.
It was a night blacker than a German conscience. Two shadows glided over the snow and stopped in the shelter of a rock which dominated all the narrow slope, the enemy's trenches, the awful mass of peaks and jagged ridges. At the side of the adversary's position the snow was marked with an enormous black streak which was lost in the depth of the mountains. It was the abyss, a frightful wedge-shaped crack which looked like an enormous interrogation point drawn with charcoal on an immense white sheet.
"You feel all right?"