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Updated: June 15, 2025
Like the hare, if the fore-leg is injured, deer cannot progress; if only the hind-quarter is hit, there is no telling how far they may go. Therefore the cross-bow, as enabling the hunter to choose the exact spot where his bolt should strike, became the weapon of the chase, and by its very perfection began the extermination of the deer.
To this he continually traces the decay of some favourite custom, and, indeed, the general downfall of all chivalrous and romantic usages. "English soldiers," he says, "have never been the men they were in the days of the cross-bow and the long-bow; when they depended upon the strength of the arm, and the English archer could draw a cloth-yard shaft to the head.
But at least," he added, prompted by a wicked notion suddenly conceived, "at least you cannot taunt me with lack of address with weapons." "Give him room," said Sakr-el-Bahr, with ironical good-humour, "and he will show us prodigies." Marzak looked at him with narrowing, gleaming eyes. "Give me a cross-bow," he retorted, "and I'll show thee how to shoot," was his amazing boast.
That officer then took up the story, and stated that seeing the evidence was not conclusive, and it was probable that if an attempt was made to arrest the person, whomsoever he might be, who had used the cross-bow, any evidence of treasonable design might be destroyed before he was seized, he had accepted the offer of Master Vickars to climb the roof, lower himself to the window from which the bolt would be shot, and, if possible, strike it from the man's hands, so that it would fall down the roof to the court-yard below, where men were placed to seize it.
What could have become of the cobbler's beloved lodgers? At noon the day before, their host, who in March usually fastened the luck- bringing nest firmly with his own hands, had stolen up to the roof, and with his cross-bow shot first the little wife and then the husband.
"Heer, Adrian," said Martin, "you have the cross-bow and the bolts, and you used to be the best shot of all three of us; will you help me to hold the causeway?" Now Adrian knew that Martin said this, not because he was a good shot with the cross-bow, but because he did not trust him, and wished to have him close to his hand, but he answered: "With all my heart, as well as I am able."
A squire dashed from the forest the archer, to whom this noble quarry had fallen a victim, appeared in the clearing, holding aloft the cross-bow from which he had sent the bolt. His arrow was fixed in the doctor's breast; alas, the man had only sent the shaft, to save his fallen master from the hammer in the Jew's hand.
They could see the strong hand pushing it up; and Dick raised his cross-bow, waiting for the head to follow. But now there came an interruption. From a distant corner of the Moat House shouts began to be heard, and first one voice, and then several, crying aloud upon a name.
"Ah! that was wrong," said the Jew, "that was the part of a fool. No Christians here could buy so many horses and armour no Jew except myself would give him half the values. But thou hast a hundred zecchins with thee in that bag," said Isaac, prying under Gurth's cloak, "it is a heavy one." "I have heads for cross-bow bolts in it," said Gurth, readily.
Each drew his sword, and they were pressing together, when Heinz, seeing a Schlangenwalder aiming with his cross-bow, rode at him furiously, and the melee became general; shots were fired, not only from cross-bows, but from arquebuses, and in the throng Friedel lost sight of the main combat between his brother and the count.
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