Out we rushed, to find that the gallant forty, marshalled at the entrance to the main gallery, had been struck full in the face by a mighty ice-cold blast, due to the displacement of air, and that for a few moments they were held up by a series of after-explosions, caused by the ignition of the mines which the hapless Austrians had prepared. One of the men, describing the explosion to me the next day, said:-- "A huge tongue of flame, followed by a mighty column of smoke, shot into the air, blowing the entire top of the mountain into the sky. Ah! _capitano_, it resembled nothing so much as the eruption of a volcano; and if it is true, as I am told, that Don Gelasio spoke of imitating Vesuvius, he could not have chosen a happier image or succeeded better." But let me tell you the sequel. At length the men were able to bound forward in the darkness towards the enemy trenches. Just at that moment the moon suddenly beamed forth behind the clouds, revealing the shattered summit of the Col, heaps of mutilated bodies, and groups of dumfounded, trembling survivors, with arms upraised in token of surrender. All this time our artillery was raining a shower of shells on the mountain saddle between the Col di Lana and Monte Sief, with the double object of preventing the flight of the enemy and their reinforcement. But they were all glad to give in, being thoroughly unnerved and dazed, and well aware of the fact that both telegraphic and telephonic communication with their main forces had been completely destroyed by the explosion. It seems that at the fateful hour they happened to have an extra force on the Col, a company sent specially from Sief to relieve the soldiery in the trenches; hence the large number of victims. Considerably over two hundred must have been blown to atoms or killed by falling _débris_. But we had no time that night to bother about the dead and wounded. Our whole attention was directed towards the prisoners, a first batch of whom, including four officers, was soon being taken down the mountain by ten of our brave volunteers. A second batch of five officers and a hundred and ten men followed soon afterwards. In addition we took possession of a shattered mountain gun, cleverly mounted in a cavern and half-a-dozen equally useless mitrailleuses. Five others, with two hundred rifles, were intact. Stores of food sufficient to have lasted the entire garrison for another month completed our booty. So ended the affair of the Col di Lana, which will ever be linked in the Italian annals of the war with the name of Don Gelasio Caetani, to whom is due a good deal of the credit of the great advance which, immediately afterwards, we made along the main highway through the Dolomites. LAST HOURS OF EDITH CAVELL ON NIGHT OF EXECUTION _Experience of American Diplomat in Effort to Save Life of English Nurse_ _Told by Hugh Gibson, Secretary of American Legation at Brussels_