“This cunningly conceived plan of defence I had managed to get a pretty accurate idea of--no matter how--and I laid my own plans accordingly. All the guns I could get hold of I had emplaced in positions most favourable for concentrating on the real key to the summit--the exposed machine-gun post on the crown of the cliff--with the idea, if possible, of destroying men and guns completely, or, failing in that, at least to render it untenable for the reserves who would try to rally to its defence. “We had the position ranged to an inch, and so, fortunately, lost no time in ‘feeling’ for it. This, with the surprise incident to it, was perhaps the principal factor in our success; for the plan--at least so far as _taking_ the summit was concerned--worked out quite as perfectly in action as upon paper. That is the great satisfaction of working with the Alpin, by the way: he is so sure, so dependable, that the ‘human fallibility’ element in a plan (always the most uncertain quantity) is practically eliminated. “It is almost certain that our sudden gust of concentrated gun-fire snuffed out the lives of all the men in the machine-gun post before they had time to send word of our developing infantry attack to the reserves in the gallery below. At any rate, these latter made no attempt whatever to swarm up to the defence of the crest, even after our artillery fire ceased. The consequence was that the 120 Alpini I sent to scale the cliff reached the top with but three casualties, these probably caused by rolling rocks or flying rock fragments. The Austrians in their big ‘funk-hole’ were taken completely by surprise, and 130 of them fell prisoners to considerably less than that number of Italians. The rest of 200 escaped or were killed in their flight.