“The gun--with the necessary parts and munition--was taken up in the night, and at daybreak it was set up and ready for action. It fired just forty shots before the Austrian ‘heavies’ blew it--and all but one or two of its brave crew--to pieces with a rain of high-explosive. But it had done its work, and done it well. The sacrifice was not in vain. The troublesome Austrian battery was put so completely out of action that the enemy never thought it worth while to re-emplace it. “That is just a sample of the fantastic things we were doing all of the three months that we drove the tunnel under the summit of the Col di Lana. The last few weeks were further enlivened by the knowledge that the Austrians were countermining against us. Once they drove so near that we could feel the jar of their drills, but they exploded their mine just a few metres short of where it would have upset us for good and all. All the time work went on until, on April 17, the mine was finished, charged, and ‘tamped.’ That night, while every gun we could bring to bear rained shell upon the Austrian position, it was exploded. A crater 150 feet in diameter and sixty feet deep engulfed the ridge the enemy had occupied, and this our waiting Alpini rushed and firmly held. Feeble Austrian counter-attacks were easily repulsed, and the Col di Lana was at last completely in Italian hands.” * * * * * Colonel Garibaldi leaned back in his chair and gazed thoughtfully at the cracks in the ceiling as one whose tale is finished. The end had come rather abruptly, I thought, and I was inclined to press for further details. “It must have been a grand sight,” I ventured--“that mountain-top blowing off into the air with hundreds of shells bursting about it. Where were you at the great moment?” The grave face grew a shade graver, and a wistful smile softened the lines of the firm mouth. “Not in sight of the Col di Lana, I am sorry to say,” was the reply. “My health broke down a fortnight before the end, and another officer was in command at the climax. It was one of the greatest disappointments of my life. I would have given my right hand to have been the first man into that crater. But never mind,” he concluded, rising and squaring his broad shoulders; “bigger things than the Col di Lana are ahead before this war is over, and I feel that I am not going to miss any more of them. It’s the Garibaldi way, you know, to be in at the death.” * * * * * THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. BY BOYD CABLE. “Boyd Cable is already one of the Prose Laureates of the War--no one can describe more vividly the fierce confusion of trench-fighting.”--_Punch._ AIRMEN O’ WAR. 6s. net. Thrilling examples, derived from personal war experience, of the high courage and ready humour of our intrepid airmen. FRONT LINES. 6s. net.