With the confidence of men who understood that the magazine must have been so entirely destroyed at once as to annihilate all further danger in an instant, the searchers went up to the ruin of the outer wall and peered into the great dusty pit out of which the foundations of the magazine had been hurled hundreds of feet into the air. Something of the outline of the enclosure could still be traced, and the sentinels whom Giovanni had warned from their post had already told their story. They found, too, that the missing man himself had been one of the sentries, and the inference was clear: their commanding officer had been killed before he had reached the last post.
For a long time they searched in vain. Great masses of masonry had shot through the outer wall and had rolled on or been stopped by the inequalities of the ground. Most of the wall itself was fallen and its direction could only be traced by a heap of ruins. Twilight had turned to darkness, and the search grew more and more difficult as a fine rain began to fall. Below, the multitude was already ebbing back to Rome; it was dark, it was wet, hardly any one had been hurt, and there was nothing to see: the best thing to be done was to go home.
It was late when a squad of four artillerymen heard a low moan that came from under a heap of stones close by them. In an instant they were at work with the pickaxes and spades they had borrowed from the peasants' houses, foreseeing what their work would be. From time to time they paused a moment and listened. Before long they recognised their comrade's voice.
'Easy, brothers! Don't crack my skull with your pickaxes, for Heaven's sake!'
'Is the Captain there?' asked one of the men.
'Dead,' answered the prisoner. 'He was warning me when we were knocked down together. Make haste, but for goodness' sake be careful!'
They were trained men and they did their work quickly and well. What had happened was this. The heavy and irregular mass of masonry that had pinned Giovanni to the ground by his arm had helped to make a sort of shelter, across which a piece of the outer wall had fallen without breaking, followed by a mass of rubbish. By what seemed almost a miracle to the soldiers, their companion was entirely unhurt, and no part of the officer's body had been touched except the arm that lay crushed beneath the stones.