Schneider, again a firebrand without sentiment, coolly unslung the carbine from his shoulder, and put a shot across that evidently counted, for it raised a death-yell.
Without further ado, the soldier-airman plumped down on the ground, with his back to the sufferer on the blanket, and hoisted upon his broad shoulders the sorely wounded soldier, who faintly protested, and urged Schneider not to so hamper himself.
But you might as well argue with the wind; the sorrel-top warrior was up and away, making little of his load, Henri sprinting at his heels.
The firing company of Russians, either stragglers from the rear of a corps or scouts in advance of one, had evidently no intention of permitting the escape of several prospective prisoners, and they took up the chase as eagerly as the sporting pursuers of a deer, whooping and shooting as they bounded in a body across the separating hollow.
But for the good start made, Schneider could not have possibly, extra-weighted as he was, maintained speed enough to have gained even the base of the mountain for which he was heading. As it resulted, the carrier and the carried had hardly reached the first level, some fifty feet up, when the Muscovite marksmen were in close target range, and a leaden pellet among the many flattening against the rocks clipped the visor of Henri's cap as he cast a last look at the oncoming crowd before climbing like a squirrel into the rocky shelter above.
Schneider had placed Captain Schwimmer out of any possible line of fire from below, and was doing some return shooting on his own account. Unluckily for this style of defense, all of the surplus ammunition was in the locker of the biplane back in the woods, and the few rounds in the aviator's pockets were soon exhausted.
Henri knew that such was the situation by the fervid remarks of his companion.
But such was the angle of the aviators' perch that there could be no attack except from the front, and even that was a climbing approach.
It occurred to Henri, considering the lay of the land, that lead was not the only effective substance with which to repel boarders.
The ground was loaded with natural ammunition—loose rocks and rocks, thousands of them, from fist size up to a ton.