"I should like to know why they are after me especially, who am not even firing, while they are sparing these monkeys who have followed me and are shooting like mad. Oh! Perhaps it is on account of the uniform of that miserable officer. If that is the case, my dear ones, enough of your sport. 'Oho! I am an Italian. Stop firing, for Heaven's sake, so that I can tell you something important. Oho! Enough, I say!'"
And standing up straight, he hurled the cape and the cap away from him, and with no thought of danger, made for the spot from which came the Italian fire.
Then came the end of the scene. The Croats behind him jumped to their feet like so many jacks-in-the-box, threw their arms about and waved their hands in the air.... From a hedge not far off, a company of bersaglieri came running up and surrounded them, yelling, "Surrender!"
"If one of them moves, stick him like a toad," commanded a lieutenant.
"Don't worry, sir, I'll spit him for your roasting."
"Secure their officer."
"Heh, boys! don't joke ... lower your bayonets. I'm no Austrian officer. I am Pinocchio. Mollica, don't you recognize me?"
"You beastly little creature, what game are you playing? But I'll run you through, all the same."
"What's up now?"
"Lieutenant, Mollica wants to make believe that I am an Austrian lieutenant, because I was the cause of his losing his place as orderly with General Win-the-War, but I am Pinocchio. Do you know me? I am glad. Order these twenty apes, which I have brought all the way here, to be bound, and then if you give me thirty men I will guarantee to catch some others that I have put to bed in the big barracks under the protection of the Red Cross, who pretended they were ill, but who had hidden their guns under the covers to 'croak Italian hogs.'"