A LITTLE ITALIAN HERO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11314, 8 March 1900, Page 3

A LITTLE ITALIAN HERO.

■' [De Amicis is one of the most picturesque of modern writers of travel. In his Cuoie, brought- out some years ago, he addressed himself more particularly to the ■ young, and from a translation of this the folio-wing pathetio incident is taken. The translation bears the title of " The Heart of a Boy."] Dpbing the first day of the Battle of Custo7,z»i on July 24, 1848, about. 60 soldiers of an infantry regiment of our army went to the top of a hill to occupy a solitary house. They were suddenly assailed by two companies of Austrian soldiers, who showered on them bullets from every side. Our soldiers were hard pressed to find refuge in the house, and had time only to hastily barricade the doors, after having left some dead and wounded on the outside. Having barred the dcors, our men hastened to the windows on the ground floor and commenced a brisk discharge at the enemy, who approached little by little, having arranged themselves in a semi-circle, and returning the fire vigorously. The 60 Italian soldiers were commanded by two subaltern officers and a captain, an old man, tall and austere, with white hair and moustache. They had with them a little Sardinian drummer-boy, a lad a little over it years old, who looked to bo scarcely 12. He had a small olive brown face, with two deep little eyes wliich glittered with animation. The captain, from a room on the first floor, commanded the defence, giving his orders like pistol.shots, and no sign of emotion could be seen in that passive face. The little drummer-boy, rather pale but steady on his legs, having jumped upon a chair, loaned against the side wall and itretch his neck to look outside the window. He saw through the smoke the white uniforms of tho Austrians as they slowly advanced. § The house was situated on the summit of a steep incline, and had but one little high window in tho roof on the side of the slope. Tho Austrians did not threaten the house from that side; the slope was unencumbered and the fusilade only beat the front and two sides of the house. But it was a terrible fusilade. A shower of bullets fell outside, and inside cracked the ceilings, the furniture, tho shutters, and the door frames, filling the air wRh pieces of wood, plaster, broken glass, whizzing, rebounding, breaking everything, and making an uproar enough to burst one's skull. From time to time, one of the soldiers, who was firing.from the windows, would fall, crashing back upon tho floor, and be taken aside. Some staggered from room to room, pressing their hands over their wounds. In the kitchen there was a dead man, with his forehead cut open. The semi-circlo of the enemy was drawing nearer and nearer together. At a certain point the captain, who had been impassive until then, began to grow uneasy, and was seen rushing out of the room followed by a sergeant. After three or four minutes the sergeant came running back and asked foi the drummer-boy, making him a rigu to follow him. The boy rushed up the .wooden ladder and entered with the sergeant into a bare attic, where he saw the captain, who was writing with a pencil upon a piece of paper, leaning upon a little window. At his feet upon the floor there was a rope, which had been used to draw water from the well. The captain folded up the sheet of paper, and said brusquely, locking sharply at tho boy with his cold grey eyes, before which all soldiers trembled: ' Drummer-boy!" The drummer-boy put his hand to his visor. The captain said: "Have you any courage?" The eyes of the hoy flashed. "Yes, captain," he replied. "Look down there," said the captain, pushing him to the little window, " down the plain, near the houses of Villafranea, where there is a glimmer of bayonets. There ara our men, motionless. Take this note, grasp the rope, descend from the little window, rush down the slope, through the fields, and when you reach our men give this note to the first officer whom you meet. Throw off your strap and your knapsack." The drummer-boy threw off the strap and the knapsack, put the note in his breastpocket; the sergeant flung out the rope, holding one end of it fast in his hands; the captain helped the boy to get through the little window, with his back turned to the open country. "Look out," ho said; " the salvation of this detachment rests (upon your courage and upon jour legs." "Trust in me, captain," replied tho boy, 1 BB he let himself down. "Lean down on the slope side," tho captain said, again clutching the rope together pith the sergeant. "Do not falter." "God help you." In a few moments the drummer-boy was on the ground, tho sergeant pulled up the rope, and disappeared; the captain stepped Impetuously to the window and saw tho boy flying down the incline. He thought he had succeeded in running without being observed, when five or six little clouds which rose from the ground in front and from behind him warned the captain that the boy had been seen by the Austrian?, who were shooting at him from the top of the hill. Those littlo clouds were dust cast , up by the bullets, But the little drummer-boy continued to run swiftly— of a sudden he dropped. "He is killed!" roared the captain, biting his fist. He had 'barely uttered these words when ho saw the boy get up again. "Ha! it is only a fall!" he mumbled to himself and breathed again. The little drummer-boy had begun to run with all his might, but he limped. | " He must have turned his ankle," thought the captain. Another little cloud arose here and there around the boy, but each time at a further distance from him. "He is safe!" the captain exclaimed in triumph, but he kept on following him with his eyes, trembling; because if he did not reach the soldiers very soon with the note, asking succour, all his soldiers would be killed, or he would be obliged to surrender and givo himgelf up as a prisoner with the others. The boy ran quickly for a little time, then slackened his pace and limped; then he would start to run again, each time more; fatigued, and every once in awhile he would stumble and pause. "Perhaps a bullet has grazed him,' thought the captain, who was observing all his movements. Quivering anil excited, be spoke to him as though he might hear him. He measured in a restless way, with a burning eye, the distance intervening between • the running boy and the gleaming of the I middle of the cornfields, gilded by tho sun. "Go ahead! Bun! Oh, lie stops, that cursed lxiy! Ah! he begins to run again." An officer came to tell him. panting, that the enemy, without interrupting the fusilade, were hoisting a white clot!: to intimate surrender.. "Let it not be answered!" he cried, without taking his eyes off the drum-irer-boy, who was already in the plain, but not running any longer, and seeming to drag himself along with difficulty. '""Jo ahead! Run!" said the captain, clinching his teeth. " Bun. if you have to die, you rascal, but run!" and he uttered a terrible oath. "Ah! infamous child! he has seated himself; that poltroon!" The boy, whoso head up to this time he had seen above the cornfield, bad disappeared as if he had fallen. After a moment his head came up again, but lie was soon lost behind the hedges and was seen no more. . Then the captain came down impetuously; tho bullets were showering, the rooms were crowded with the wounded, some of whom -wtere. whirling around like drunken men, clutching pieces of furniture; the walls and the floor were stained with blood, and bodies were lying across the doors; the lieutenant had his right arm broken by a bullet; the smoke and the dust filled everything. " Courage cried the captain. " Stand to your place! Succour is coming! Keep up your courage!" Suddenly the firing of the Austrians slackened, and a thundering voice cried, first in German and then Italian: "Surrender!" "No!" howled the captain from the window, and the fusilade recommenced more thickly and furiously from both sides. Other soldiers fell. Already, moro than one window wat without, defenders; the fatal moment was imminent Tho captain cried in a despairing voicie: "They arc not coming! They are not coming!" and around furiously, bending his sword with his convulsive hand, ready to die; suddenly the sergeant, rushing down from the garret, uttered a loud cry of joy, shouting to the captain: _ "They aro coming! They are coming!" "They are coming!" repeated the captain, joyfully. At that cry all those who were unhurt, as well as the wounded, the sergeant and officers rushed to the windows, and tho resistance becamo more" furious than before. In a few momonts a certain hesitation was noticed and a beginning of disorder amo.ia foe. Quickly tho captain assembled a little troop in the room on the ground flooi to make an exit with the bayonet. Then lie ran up to the little window again. Hardly had ho reached it when they heard a hasty tramping of feet, accompanied with a tormidablo hurrah, and from the windows they saw coming through. the smoke the doublepointed hats of the Italian carabineers, a squadron rushing forward at great speed, and ' the lightning flash of blades whirling in the air and falling on heads, on shoulders, on backs. Then the captain darted out from' the door with lowered bayonets. The enemy wavered Mid were thrown into confusion and disorder. They hastily retreated, and the

| ground was left unencumbered, the house was I free, and two' battalions of Italian infantry and two cannons occupied the hill. s The captain, with the soldiers that remained, rejoined his regiment, fought again, and was slightly wounded in his left hand by a ricochet bullet during the last' assault with the bayonet. The day ended with a victory for our men. But the day after, having recommenced the fight, the Italians were overpowered, in spite of a valorous resistance, by the overwhelming numbers of the Austrains; and, on the morning of the 26th, they had to retreat sadly toward the Mincio River. The captain, although wounded, made his way on foot with the soldiers, tired and silent, and arriving toward cunset at Goito, on the Mincio, looked immediately for his lieutenant, who hud been taken up with his broken arm by our ambulance, and yet had arrived there before him. Someone had shown him the church where a field hospital had been improviiied. He went there. The church was filled with wounded, lying in two rows on'bedn and mattresses stretched on the floor. Two physicians and several nurses were coming and going, busily occupied, and ono could hear suppressed groans and cries. As soon as he entered the captain halted and 1c oked around for his officer. At that moment he heard himself called by a faint voice vsry near him—"captain!" He turned around; it was the little drum-mer-boy. Ho was stretched on a cot bed, covered up to the breast with a rough window curtain in red and white squares, and with his arms out; pale and thin, but with his eyes still sparkling like twe black joins. "Is it you?" asked tho captain, rather sharply, although amazed. "Bravo, you did your duty." " I did all that was possible," answered the boy. "Are you wounded?" asked the captain, looking for his officer in the beds near by. "What could I do?" said tho boy, who gained courage by speaking, while feeling tho satisfaction of having been wounded for the first time; under other circumstances ho would hardly have dared to open his mouth in the presence of that captain. "I did my best to run bending down; thoy saw me at once. I would h« ve arrived twenty minutes sooner if they had not hit me. Fortunately I soon found a captain of the staff and gave him youi note. But it was a very hard matter to run after that caress. I was dying with thirst; I was afraid that_ I would never arrive, and was crying with rage, thinking that every minute dolayod was sending another soul to the other world. But that is enough; I have done what I.could; I am satisfied. But, with your permission, look at yourself, captain, you are losing blood." And truly, from the badly-bandaged hand of tho captain some drops of blood trickled down through his fingers. Do you wish mo to tie up your bandage, captain? Hold out your hand a minute." The captain hold out his left hand and stretched the riglt one to assist the boy in untying the knot and tying it again; but the boy, raising himself from his pillow with difficulty, grew pale, and had to lean his head back again. "Enough! enough!" the captain said, looking at him j.nd drawing the bandaged hand away that ".ho bov wanted to hold. " Attend to your own affairs instead of those of othors; things that are not severe may become serious." The drummer-toy shook his head. "But you," said tho captain, looking attentively. " you must have lost a great deal of blood to be as weak as you are." "Lost much blood?" replied tho lad with a smile. "I liavs lost moro than blood. Look!" And he pulled down the cover that was over him. The captain started back and stopped— horrified. Tho la:l had but one leg left, the left one had been amputated above the knee, and the stump was bandaged by bloody cloths. At that moment the military surgeon, a little fleshy fellow in short sleeves, passed by. "Ah, captain!" said he, quickly, pointing to the drummer-boy, "a most unfortunate case. A leg that might have been easily saved if he had rot forced it in that foolish way; a cured inflammation; it had to bo cut off away up here. Oh! but he is a brave lad, I assure you; he has not shed a tear; he has not uttered a cry. I was proud that it was an Italian boy while I was performing the operation; upon my honour, he belongs to a good race, by heaven!" And ho went away. The captain frowned and looked fixedly at the boy, putting the cover back over him: then slowly, as though unconsciously, raised his hand to his head and took off his cap. "Captain!" exclaimed astonished boy, "what aro you doing, captain, and that for mo?" And then that rough soldier, who had never said a mild word to one of his subalterns, answered, with ail indiscribably affectionate and sweet voice-"I am nothing but a captain, you aro a hero!" Then ho threw himself with open arms rn tho drummer-boy and pressed him three times upon his heart.