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The arrows were three feet long, pointed with deer's horn, each carrying two feathers twisted about the shaft. They, like the bow and quiver, were fine specimens of workmanship and would have compared favorably with those used by the great English archers of the Middle Ages.
The tall, shining grass went by like showers of arrows; the very trees seemed like lances hurled at my heart, and shaving it by a hair's breadth. Across some vast, smooth valley I saw a beech-tree by the white road stand up little and defiant. It grew bigger and bigger with blinding rapidity. It charged me like a tilting knight, seemed to hack at my head, and pass by.
The poor thralls of the estate were "worked to death;" stone had to be brought from an immense distance, for wood might burn if subjected to fiery arrows; the moat was deepened and water let in from the river; towers were placed at each angle, furnished with loopholes for archers; and over the entrance was a ponderous arch, with grate for raining down fiery missiles, and portcullis to bar all approach to the inner quadrangle, which was comparatively unchanged.
And now the battle became a mighty one indeed. Arrows shot from invisible bows flew quicker than flashes of light against this single mighty fighter, but they glanced off a magic shield which fairy arts had interposed in front of him. Weapons such as mortal hands had never wielded in any of the great battles of the world were now brought into play; but never for a moment did Monkey lose his head.
The horrible monster, insensible to arrows, devoured many soldiers before it succumbed beneath a shower of stones, and Regulus sent the reptile's skin to Rome as a testimony of the adventure. The envoys from Saguntum had a tedious wait before a centurion ushered them into the Senaculum. The Greek, sweeping his glance over the semicircle, was perturbed by the majesty of the assemblage.
The impact of his arrows was so weighty that I have beheld one go entirely through the paunch of a full-grown male elephant and protrude a foot on the other side. With rhinoceroses and hippopotami the procedure was similar.
"But tell me," replied he, "can you shoot with a bow?" I answered, that the bow was one of my exercises in my youth. He gave me a bow and arrows, and, taking me behind him upon an elephant, carried me to a thick forest some leagues from the town.
Half their force lying upon the field, wiped out by a small, but invincible and apparently invulnerable being, the remainder broke and ran, pursued by Stevens to the point where the red monsters had first halted. He recovered his arrows and returned to the cave, opening his face-plate as he came. "All x, sweetheart?" he asked, rolling away the boulders.
And him followed a great being in the guise of a hunter furnished with the bow, arrows, and the sword, and surrounded by females. Thereupon, taking my bow and the two inexhaustible quivers, I pierced with shafts that terrible and frightful creature. And, O king, he also said unto me, "Why hast thou, transgressing the rules of hunting, hit the animal first hit at by me?
But here the archers were waiting, and now, in the place of stones, arrows were hailed upon them, till at length, utterly bewildered and unable to strike a blow in their own defence, they turned to fly towards the open country.
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