Part 14 (1/2)

”No, not exactly ill, but I suffered terribly from--lack of courage.”

”Why don't you get up?”

”I'm afraid of sliding off again.”

”Let me help you.”

Captain Teschisso took hold of the rope Pinocchio had tied around his waist and pulled one end of it through his leather belt, fastened the other end round his body, and, after planting his feet firmly, said: ”Take hold of the rope and pull yourself up. You are quite safe; the mountain will crumble before I fall.”

Pinocchio did his best to get on his feet, but couldn't succeed. His hinder parts adhered to the crust of the snow as if some magician had glued them firmly. Teschisso, who had little patience and thought that Pinocchio was feigning in order not to have to climb the mountain, gave such a vigorous pull on the rope tied to the boy's belt that he jerked him up, swung him through the air for several feet, and flung him face downward on a heap of snow as downy as a feather-bed. A piece of gray cloth left behind showed the spot where Pinocchio had been miraculously halted in his precipitous descent. Teschisso glanced at it and couldn't keep back one of his loud, honest mountain laughs.

Pinocchio, believing he was being swung around for fun, sprang to his feet, so furious that the captain's hilarity grew even stronger and louder.

”Heavens! And you can thank Heaven that you are still in the land of the living. Look there and feel the back of your trousers. Hah, hah, hah! Don't you understand yet what has happened to you? You were caught in a wolf-trap which the Austrians put there to catch some of us, and instead you were the one, which isn't the same thing at all.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: PINOCCHIO DID HIS BEST TO GET ON HIS FEET, BUT COULDN'T SUCCEED]

Notwithstanding the laughter of the captain, Pinocchio's anger evaporated in a second. His eyes were fixed on the sc.r.a.ps of his trousers that still hung on the teeth of the trap and his hands were rubbing the frozen surface left uncovered. He longed to cry, and felt so ridiculous that he was almost on the point of flinging himself again down the snowy slope.

”Come on, come on! There's no time to lose. There is a long road to go and the clouds are hanging lower. There's no sense in your staying there like a macaw, weeping for the seat of your breeches. When we arrive up there I'll have the company's tailor mend them for you.

You've got to march, and no more nonsense. Forward, march!”

”Captain, it's impossible.”

”Heavens alive! How impossible?”

”I am not presentable.”

”Why?”

”If we find the enemy and the Austrians see me with my trousers in such a state, they will say that the Italian army ...”

”Fool! The Italian army never turns its rear to the enemy, and you won't, either.”

”But ...”

”If you are afraid of taking cold in your spine that's another matter.

If that's the case let's see what can be done.”

Captain Teschisso turned Pinocchio over, took a copy of a newspaper out of his pocket, folded it over four times, and stuck it into the hole of the trousers. And he did it so well that the ”Latest News”

with the headlines seemed to be framed in the ragged edges of the cloth.

”There you are. Are you satisfied?”

To tell the truth, he would have preferred to consider a little before answering, but the captain didn't give him the time. He started off with a quick stride, pulling the rope after him which he had fastened to his belt, as if bringing a calf to the butcher.

I do not know if you, my children, have ever been up in the high mountains. You must know that after you reach a certain alt.i.tude, whether because the air becomes rarefied or because of the silence that surrounds you, you seem to be living another life in another world. Your breath grows shorter; it seems as if you could not draw a long one, while the lungs are so full of oxygen that the heart beats more rapidly; then fatigue is followed by a condition of strange torpor. Nevertheless, you continue to climb without effort, as if the legs moved automatically. If you speak, the voice reaches the ears faintly as if it came from a distance. Sometimes you have a certain discomfort called mountain-sickness, which makes the temples throb and brings with it such a languor that the traveler is forced to give up his ascent. Pinocchio, who for some time had been experiencing all these sensations peculiar to the high mountains, found himself suddenly hidden in a fog so thick that he couldn't see a hand's-breath before his nose.