Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/121

 ground; the sergeant drew in the rope and disappeared; the captain stepped boldly in front of the window and saw the boy flying down the slope.

He was already hoping that the boy had succeeded in escaping unobserved, when five or six little puffs of dust, which rose from the earth in front of and behind the lad, warned him that he had been espied by the Austrians, who were firing down upon him from the top of the hill: these little clouds were thrown into the air by the bullets. But the drummer continued to run at a headlong speed. All at once he fell. “Killed!” roared the captain, clenching his fists. But before he had uttered the word he saw the drummer spring up again. “Ah, only a fall,” the captain said to himself, and drew a long breath.

The drummer, in fact, set out again at full speed; but he limped. “He has turned his ankle,” thought the captain. Again several cloudlets of dust rose here and there about the lad, but ever more distant. He was safe. The captain gave a shout of triumph. But he continued to follow him with his eyes, trembling because it was an affair of minutes: if he did not arrive yonder in the shortest possible time with the note, which called for instant succor, either all his soldiers would be killed or he should be obliged to surrender himself a prisoner with them.

The boy ran rapidly for a space, then relaxed his pace and limped, then resumed his course, but grew constantly more wearied, and every little while he stumbled and paused.

“Perhaps a bullet has grazed him,” thought the captain, and he noted all his movements, quivering