There was a big wooden staircase that the Italians had built leading up
to the various decks of the great liner, and, once on board, you could
walk out to the forward bridge of the ship where from a sort of
conning-tower you looked out at the Austrian trenches less than a mile
away without the possibility of being seen. An odd observation post,
neither asea nor ashore, and to make the confusion of elements more
complete, the gunners whose guns barked continually from just behind it
were sailors of the Italian Navy, dressed not in blue, but in military
gray-green.

[Sidenote: A view of coveted Triest.]

Triest, the coveted city, lay ten miles away in full view, and each
night the Italians saw its windows answer with flashes of dull gold the
last rays of the sun setting behind Italy. As you looked from Monfalcone
across the dreamy blue of the empty gulf between, the town lay like a
stone image, lifeless except for the white smoke curling gently from a
single tall chimney into the quiet evening air. Much nearer along the
coast was the Castle of Duina standing on an abrupt cliff. It belongs to
the Grand Duchess of Thurn and Taxis, who used to gather parties of
poets, painters, and writers there to stay in what was like a legendary
palace looking down from its high headland upon the sunlit, sail-flecked
Adriatic, stretching away into the shining distance.

[Sidenote: The Italians are evacuating the Bainsizza plateau.]

It was from that last fair glimpse of Triest that you turned back to the
grave realities of situation. On the next morning, the twenty-sixth, the
Italian supreme command announced that the Bainsizza plateau was being