It was not long until the vigorous first aid rendered by the aviators found a more marked response—the heretofore unconscious officer looked up at the anxious faces of the workers, and perceptibly smiled through the beard that concealed his mouth.
He had comprehended that he did not owe a Russian for the help that had come to him in this extremity.
Schneider addressed him in the familiar tongue of the Fatherland, and Henri also added a word of sympathy and encouragement in the same tongue, at the time bending his head in the hope of a word in reply.
That word was spoken, and others in faltering train.
"He says his name is Schwimmer, Johann Schwimmer—captain."
"A captain without a regiment," was Schneider's sad comment, his eyes bending further afield, where corpses in blue, in heaps and singly, marked the path of deadly artillery practice.
"It does look as if we are caring for the only survivor," said Henri, realizing that Schneider's mournful observation was founded upon fact.
That Captain Schwimmer understood what was passing between his rescuers was manifest, for stoic though he was, he covered his eyes with a trembling hand and his breast heaved convulsively.
At the moment there was a startling diversion—the whip-like crack of rifles from the opposite edge of the bowl, at the very point where the aviators had stood when first attracted by the shining point on the captain's tunic.
Spat, spat—bullets boring the earth close to the right, left, and at the very feet of the trio on the ridge.