The Heart of Pinocchio

t War Changes Everything-

tted his coming. When there were orders to carry to the rear or purchases to be made, it was Pinocchio who attended to them. Slender as a lizard and quick as a squirrel, he was out of the trenches without being seen and slipped along the furrows and ditches and the bushes with marvelous dext

CAPTURE A PIG AND TO D

two can stand with your noses

of the mo

I haven't the slighte

f with all kinds of jokes. Dirty as he could be, he was always grubbing with his nails in the ground to deepen the trench, to make some new breastwork, to build up an escarp. If they sent him out to find logs of wood to repair the roofs of the dugouts he would come back laden with all sorts of things. Hens and eggs were his favori

ed, squirting mud and gluing the feet of the soldiers, who, wet to the bone, had to scurry through the wire to carry ammunition to safety and to

eem to be turni

beastly lit

ou really make m

you sorr

n't want to be you i

hy

in will melt you

to administer one of his usual boxes on the ear,

?... You look to me like a roll dipped in chocolate.... Bersaglierino, come and see h

murder you, you bea

ng Pinocchio was far away. The telephone dugout was a little deeper than the trench and the water was rapidly fi

you can bail out this puddle with a cap? Yo

d soused him into the dirty water and held him under till he had drunk a cup

ng that a shell would fall on us. As if this rain weren't enough (che-chew, che-chew!); we a

! Help! Bersaglier

et him go. Shame on you!" yel

was wishing a shell would

hadn't enough

soon as he could get his breath. "I said I wished for Bertha, the cook in Papa Geppetto's house, to swe

rtha' is a Boche gun that would ha

tand? And now that you have lear

chio to do but to spit out the mud st

. With these idiots you have to pay attention to what you say. They made me swallow so much di

had done great damage. The soldiers couldn't venture any distance from the dugout to aim at the enemy who was firing at them with such accuracy. Mud prevented their movements. They couldn't change their positions because the slippery earth offered no foothold. It was impossible to excavate deep because the earth slid down. It was a critical moment. Several men had been killed, the wounded were moaning bitterly, the dying were

strians were quite quiet. But the situation hadn't improved. Orders had come from the second line to hold out at all cos

want to be caught like a bird in a net. We have plenty of 'jelly.' If two would volunteer to carry a couple of pounds of it under the entanglements of those gentlemen over yonder we might be able to

, if I am to tell you the truth, Pinocchio, too, but no o

ierino was writing rapidly a letter in pencil. Mollica had pulled out of his knapsack the old newspapers his

you weren't pleased with the d

el

ought to

pose they would let a bo

old man, but I would carry out the order like any one else.... Only, I can't understand how for a little bit of jelly those scoundrels will give up t

is what we call a mixture of stuff that when put in a pipe under the wire entanglements and set of

want to go an

nd sound, and I have still to s

t it-war had changed the dictionary. He was still more certain of this when, an hour later, he saw the "Frisian horses" arrive. He was expecting beasts with at least four legs, and instead he saw them drag in front of the trenches a huge roll of iron wound up

g. Instead, it was the Croats who were snoring. No one slept in the Italian trenches. There was a strange coming and going, a fantastic flittering of shadows. There was low talking, commands were pas

ou look like the statue of Perse

han he has on instead of in this get-up ... but what's there to b

places behind the loopholes, their muskets in position, and stood there motionless, anxious, and restless. Pinocchio, too, wanted to see what was happening, and, tak

ilence everywhere, the preparations he had watched and

me one else go. Not so bad for Mollica. He'll eat up the Austrians like waffles. If any one dares to play a trick on him he'll land hi

red flashes shining for an instant on a shower of fragments thrown up to a great height ... then blackness and the fiendish rattling of the machine-guns and crackle of musket fire. Suddenly a long white

Pinocchio asked himself, anxious

ance. It crawled along the ground, moving by starts. They had seen it, too, from the trenches an

very quick. Mollica was large and slow. What had become of him? Between the roar of the explosions and the whistle of the shells there came a shrill

. "Enough! Enough! Wretches! Don't you see that he has ceased to move?

Austrian fire grew

shed out of his hiding-place and in a c

s there ... out there in the No Man's Lan

r wounded comrades, but had scarcely go

ody, lifted it in his arms, and, gathering all his strength together, began to drag it toward the trench. All at once he felt his legs give way and he let out a yell of terror. He was answered by another from a hundred valiant throats; he saw a strange flash

rers were able to gather up the