craft with astraight gunwale, so that when afloat she seemed lower at stem and sternthan abeam, as if she would thrust her nose into a wave instead ofriding it. The planks were thick and heavy and looked as if they hadnot been bent enough to form the true buoyant curve.
The blue paint had scaled and faded, the rowlocks were mended with apiece cut from an old rake-handle, there was a small pool of bilge waterin the sternsheets from the last shower, fall of dead insects, andyellow willow leaves. A clumsy vessel put together years ago in someby-water of the far distant Thames above Oxford, and not good enougheven for that unknown creek. She had drifted somehow into thislandlocked pond and remained unused, hauled on the strand beneath thewillows; she could carry five or six, and if they bumped her well on thestones it mattered little to so stout a frame.
Still she was a boat, with keel and curve, and like lovers they saw nodefect. Bevis looked at the hole in the seat or thwart, where the mastwould have to be stepped, and measured it (not having a rule with him)by cutting a twig just to the length of the diameter. Mark examined therudder and found that the lines were rotten, having hung dangling overthe stern in the water for so long. Next they stepped her length,stepping on the sand outside, to decide on the height of the mast, andwhere were the ropes to be fastened? for they meant to have somestanding rigging.
At home afterwards in the shed, while Bevis shaved the fir-pole for themast, Mark was set to carve the leaping-pole, for the South Sea savageshave everything carved. He could hardly cut the hard dried bark of theash, which had shrunk on and become like wood. He made a spiral notchround it, and then searched till he found his old spear, which had to beornamented and altered into a bone harpoon. A bone from the kitchen wassawn off while in the vice, and then half through two inches from thelargest end. Tapping a broad chisel gently, Mark split the bone down tothe sawn part, and then gradually filed it sharp. He also filed threebarbs to it, and then fitted the staff of the spear into the hollow end.While he was engraving lines and rings on the spear with hispocket-knife, the dinner interrupted his work.
Bevis, wearying of the mast, got some flints, and hammered them to splitoff flakes for arrowheads, but though he bruised his fingers, he couldnot chip the splinters into shape. The fracture always ran too far, ornot far enough. John Young, the labourer, came by as he was doing thissitting on the stool in the shed, and watched him.
"I see a man do that once," said John.
"How did he do it? tell me? what's the trick?" said Bevis, impatient toknow.
"Aw, I dunno; I see him at it. A' had a gate-hinge snopping um."
The iron hinge of a gate, if removed from the post, forms a fairly goodhammer, the handle of iron as well as the head.
"Where was it? what did he do it for?"
"Aw, up in the Downs. Course he did it to soil um."
The prehistoric art of chipping flints lingered among the shepherds onthe Downs, till the percussion-cap came in, and no longer having to getflakes for the flintlock guns they slowly let it disappear. Young hadseen it done, but could not describe how.
Bevis battered his flints till he was tired; then he took up the lastand hurled it away in a rage with all his might. The flint whirled overand over and hummed along the ground till it struck a small sarsen orboulder by the wood-pile, put there as a spur-stone to force thecareless carters to drive straight. Then it flew into splinters withthe jerk of the stoppage.
"Here's a sharp 'un," said John Young, picking up a flake, "and here'sanother."
Altogether there were three pointed flakes which Bevis thought would do.Mark had to bring some reeds next day from the place where they grewhalf a mile below his house in a by-water of the brook. They weregreen, but Bevis could not wait to dry them. He cut them off a littleabove the knot or joint, split the part above, and put the flint flakein, and bound it round and round with horsehair from the carter's storein the stable. But when they were finished, they were not shot off,lest they should break; they were carried indoors into the room upstairswhere there was a bench, and which they made their armoury.
They made four or five darts next of deal shaved to the thickness of athin walking-stick, and not quite so long. One end was split in four--once down and across that--and two pieces of cardboard doubled up thrustin, answering the purpose of feathering. There was a slight notchtwo-thirds up the shaft, and the way was to twist a piece of twine roundit there crossed over a knot so as just to hold, the other end of thetwine firmly coiled about the wrist, so that in throwing the string wastaut and the point of the dart between the fingers. Hurling it thestring imparted a second force, and the dart, twirling like an arrow,flew fifty or sixty yards.
Slings they made with a square of leather from the sides of old shoes, asmall hole out out in the centre that the stone might not slip, butthese they could never do much with, except hurl pebbles from therick-yard, rattling up into the boughs of the oak, on the other side ofthe field. The real arrows to shoot with--not the reed arrows to lookat--were tipped with iron nails filed to a sharp point. They had muchtrouble in feathering them; they had plenty of goose-feathers (savedfrom the Christmas plucking), but to glue them on properly was not easy.
Volume One, Chapter XI.
SAVAGES CONTINUED--THE CATAMARAN.
With all their efforts, they could not make a blow-tube, such as areused by savages. Bevis thought and thought, and Mark helped him, andPan grabbed his fleas, all together in the round blue summer-house; andthey ate a thousand strawberries, and a basketful of red currants, ripe,from the wall close by, and two young summer apples, far from ready, andyet they could not do it. The tube ought to be at least as long as thesavage, using it, was tall. They could easily find sticks that werejust the thickness, and straight, but the difficulty was to bore throughthem. No gimlet or auger was long enough; nor could they do it with abar of iron, red-hot at the end; they could not keep it true, but alwaysburned too much one side or the other.
Perhaps it might be managed by inserting a short piece of tin tubing,and making a little fire in it, and gradually pushing it down as thefire burnt. Only, as Bevis pointed out, the fire would not live in sucha narrow place without any draught. A short tube was easily made out ofelder, but not nearly long enough. The tinker, coming round to mend thepots, put it into their heads to set him to make a tin blow-pipe, fivefeet in length; which he promised to do, and sent it in a day or two.But as he had no sheet of tin broad enough to roll the tube in onepiece, he had made four short pipes and soldered them together. Nothingwould go straight through it because the joints were not quite perfect,inside there was a roughness which caught the dart and obstructed thepuff, for a good blow-tube must be as smooth and well bored as agun-barrel.
When they came to look over their weapons, they found they had not gotany throw-sticks, nor a boomerang. Throw-sticks were soon made, bycutting some with a good thick knob; and a boomerang was made out of acurved branch of ash, which they planed down smooth one side, and cut toa slight arch on the other.
"This is a capital boomerang," said Bevis. "Now we shall be able toknock a rabbit over without any noise, or frightening the rest, and itwill come back and we can kill three or four running."
"Yes, and one of the mallards," said Mark. "Don't you know?--they arealways too far for an arrow, and besides, the arrow would be lost if itdid not hit. Now we shall have them. But which way ought we to throwit--the hollow first, or the bend first?"
"Let's try," said Bevis, and ran with the boomerang from the shed intothe field.
Whiz! Away it went, bend first, and rose against the wind till theimpetus ceased, when it hung a moment on the air, and slid to the right,falling near the summer-house. Next time it turned to the left, andfell in the hedge; another time it hit the hay-rick: nothing could makeit go straight. Mark tried his hardest, and used it both ways, but invain--the boomerang rose against the wind, and, so far, acted properly,but directly the force with which it was thrown was exhausted, it did asit liked, and swept round to the left or
the right, and never oncereturned to their feet.
"A boomerang is a stupid thing," said Bevis, "I shall chop it up. Ihate it."
"No; put it upstairs," said Mark, taking it from him. So the boomerangwas added to the collection in the bench-room. A crossbow was the nextthing, and they made the stock from a stout elder branch, because whenthe pith was taken out, it left a groove for the bolt to slide up. Thebow was a thick briar, and the bolt flew thirty or forty yards, but itdid not answer, and they could hit nothing with it. A crossbow requiresdelicate adjustment, and to act well, must be made almost as accuratelyas a rifle.
They shot a hundred times at the sparrows on the roof, who were nosooner driven off than they came back like flies, but never hit one; sothe crossbow was hung up with the boomerang. Bevis, from much practice,could shoot far better than that with his bow and arrow. He stuck up anapple