Military life in Italy : sketches - Societa italiana di storia militare

THE CAMP. 215
scattered straw. Beyond the ditch, small trees on the ground
split and broken up, thinned out hedges, furrows trampled
down and ruined ;
all the signs of a great sacking. Oh, poor
colonel, how furious he was !
A little wooden bridge, just made with two trunks of trees
and a few boards, unites the camp with the road. Beside the
bridge, in the camp, along the edge of
the ditch, there are ten
or twelve isolated tents in which the prisoners in irons are
confined. On the bridge is a sentinel, another in front of
those tents, and others around the camp at the different points
of exit.
Such is the camp.
The sun was setting ;
it was a beautiful evening in July.
The sky was wonderfully clear, the country
still fresh and
damp from a recent rain ;
and that dark grove, the beautiful
green hill, the villas, and the little hamlet still
gilded by a ray
of the sinking sun, made the scene a fascinating one.
It was an hour of rest and recreation for the regiment. All
were in motion. Most of them, in their shirt sleeves and linen
trowsers, wandered among the tents, alone, in couples,
or in
bands ;
some were seated or stretched out in groups, or chasing
each other, like boys in the court-yard of a school others
;
were playing a game with stones others fenced with sticks in
;
the midst of a circle of spectators ; others, still, having stretched
a bit of cord between two tents, jumped on a wager between
two rows of admirers ; some, seated on the edge of the ditch,
around a rag of table-cloth, devoured a few leaves of lettuce in
a friendly way, nibbling at a little white bread (the kind the
officers eat) ;
some were seated cross-legged over the cartpoles
smoking peacefully ; some, dressed in linen waistcoats