They stand at the edge of the slope, huge round boles rising from
the mossy ground, wide fans of branches - a shadow under them, a greeny
darkness beyond.
There is depth there - depth to be explored, depth to
hide in. If there is a path, it is arched over like a tunnel with boughs;
you know not whither it goes. The fawns are sweetest in the sunlight,
moving down from the shadow; the doe best partly in shadow, partly in
sun, when the branch of a tree casts its interlaced work, fine as
Algerian silverwork, upon the back; the buck best when he stands among
the fern, alert, yet not quite alarmed - for he knows the length of his
leap - his horns up, his neck high, his dark eye bent on you, and every
sinew strung to spring away. One spot of sunlight, bright and white,
falls through the branches upon his neck, a fatal place, or near it: a
guide, that bright white spot, to the deadly bullet, as in old days to
the cross-bow bolt. It was needful even then to be careful of the aim,
for the herd, as Shakespeare tells us, at once recognised the sound of a
cross-bow: the jar of the string, tight-strained to the notch by the
goat's-foot lever, the slight whiz of the missile, were enough to startle
them and to cause the rest to swerve and pass out of range. Yet the
cross-bow was quiet indeed compared with the gun which took its place.
The cross-bow was the beginning of shooting proper, as we now understand
it; that is, of taking an aim by the bringing of one point into a line
with another. With the long-bow aim indeed was taken, but quite
differently, for if the arrow were kept waiting with the string drawn,
the eye and the hand would not go true together. The quicker the arrow
left the bow the moment that it was full drawn, the better the result. On
the other hand, the arblast was in no haste, but was adjusted
deliberately - so deliberately that it gave rise to a proverb, 'A fool's
bolt is soon shot.' This could not apply to the long-bow, with which the
arrow was discharged swiftly, while an arblast was slowly brought to the
level like a rifle. As it was hard to draw again, that added strength to
the saying; but it arose from the deliberation with which a good
cross-bowman aimed. To the long-bow the cross-bow was the express rifle.
The express delivers its bullet accurately point-blank - the bullet flies
straight to its mark up to a certain distance. So the cross-bow bolt flew
point-blank, and thus its application to hunting when the deer were
really killed for their venison. The hunter stole through the fern, or
crept about the thickets - thickets and fern exactly like those here
to-day - or waited Indian-like in ambush behind an oak as the herd fed
that way, and, choosing the finest buck, aimed his bolt so as either to
slay at once or to break the fore-leg.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 182 of 204
Words from 94283 to 94822
of 105669
