The bow had its first arrow.
An old man is not so easily affected as a young one, nor so hopeful, but
when the second test was done the veteran Mok was the wilder and more
delighted of the two who shot at the tree in the forest glade. He saw it
all! No longer could the spear be counted as the thing with which to do
most grievous hurt at a safe distance from whatever might be dangerous.
With the better bow and straighter shaft the marksmanship improved; even
for these two callow archers it was not difficult to hit at a distance of
a double spear's cast the bole of the huge tree, two yards in width at
least. And the arrow whistled as if it were a living thing, a hawk seeking
its prey, and the flint head was buried so deeply in the wood that both
Mok and Ab knew that they had found something better than any weapon the
cave men had ever known!
There followed many days more of the eager working of the old man and the
young one in the cave, and there was much testing of the new device, and
finally, one morning, Ab issued forth armed with his ax and knife, but
without his spear. He bore, instead, a bow which was the best and
strongest the two had yet learned to fashion, and a sheaf of arrows slung
behind his back in a quiver made of a hollow section of a mammoth's leg
bone which had long been kicked about the cave.
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