Though completing a continuous flight of seven hours, the aviators were there offered no temptation to alight. Hovering over the banks of the Bzura they saw a German cavalry detachment all but totally destroyed by the exploding of a Russian mine, and in turn the big guns of the Germans cut wide swathes in the Muscovite ranks.
Schneider cheered or groaned as the tide of battle swept forward and back, when victory favored or defeat menaced his comrades in the fray. The firebrand, in every quivering fiber, madly craved the chance to brave the shot and shell on the blackened battlefield.
He saw a German color bearer go down in the press of a hand-to-hand conflict, and as the mass was dissolved by artillery fire, that one still figure, among the many scattered in the open, presented irresistible appeal to the soldier-aviator.
"Land me, boy—have you the red blood to do it? Have you the courage, lad? You have, I know. Do it, lad—do it now!"
With his incoherent address, the big observer spasmodically clutched the shoulders of the young pilot.
Carried away by the vehement pleading of the man behind him, Henri set the planes for a straight fall.
Schneider bounded from the skimming machine, made it the work of a few seconds to reach the flag, which the dead man had wrapped around his body, and as quickly returned.
The powerful motors drove the biplane up and across the field, with the colors trailing over the shoulders of the observer, who, in his excitement, sang a mighty war song.
This deed of daring, directly in view of the trenches, and under the very eye of the German commander and staff, raised a tremendous cheer.