They cleared away the rubbish and looked at him as he lay on his back pale and motionless under the light of their lanterns. They knew what he had done now; they understood that of them all he was the hero. One of the men took off his cap reverently, and immediately the others followed his example, and so they all stood for a few moments looking at him in silence and in deference to his brave deeds. Then they set to work in silence to move the heavy block of broken masonry that had felled him, and their comrade helped them too, though he was stiff and bruised and dazed from the terrific shock. As the mass yielded at last before their strength and rolled away, one of the men uttered a cry.
'He is alive!' he exclaimed. 'He moved his head!'
Before he had finished speaking the man was on his knees beside Giovanni, tearing open his tunic and his shirt to listen for the beating of his heart. It was faint but audible. Giovanni Severi was not dead yet, and a few moments later his artillerymen were carrying him down the hill towards the road, his injured arm swinging like a rag at his side.
They did not wait for orders; there were a number of carriages still in the road and the men had no idea where their superiors might be. Their first thought was to get Giovanni conveyed to a hospital as soon as possible.
'We must take him to the White Sisters,' said the eldest of them. 'That is where his brother was so long.'
The others assented readily enough; and finding an empty cab in the road, they lifted the wounded officer into it and pulled up the hood against the rain, whilst two of them crept in under it, telling the cabman where to go.
In less than a quarter of an hour the cab stopped before the hospital of the White Sisters, and when the portress opened the door, the two artillerymen explained what had happened and begged that their officer might be taken in at once; and, moreover, that the portress would kindly get some money with which to pay the cabman, as they could only raise seven sous between them.
The Mother Superior had supposed that there would be many wounded, and had directed that the orderlies should be ready at the door with stretchers, although the Convent hospital did not receive accident cases or casualties except in circumstances of extreme emergency. The hospital of the Consolazione, close to the Roman Forum, was the proper place for these, but it was very much farther, and the White Sisters were so well known in all Trastevere that they were sometimes called upon, even in the middle of the night, to take in a wounded man who could not have lived to reach the great hospital beyond the Tiber.