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.
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