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Answer me now, and by the same means as I am employing, but dispatch not your answer if I show myself upon the ramparts. He folded the paper, and on the back he wrote the superscription "To the High and Mighty Duke of Babbiano." Then opening a large chest that stood against the wall, he rummaged a moment, and at last withdrew an arbalest quarrel. About the body of this he tied his note.
Next, from the wall he took down a cross-bow, and from a corner a moulinet for winding it. With his foot in the stirrup he made the cord taut and set the shaft in position. And now he closed the door, and, going to the window, which was little more than an arrow-slit, he shouldered his arbalest. He took careful aim in the direction of the ducal tent, and loosed the quarrel.
Lying upon the Calendar Stone was what at first I took to be a cross-bow made of gold; but more careful examination convinced me, especially in view of the place where I had found it, that this certainly was an arbalest called also a Jacob's staff and a cross-staff such as in no very ancient times, until the invention of the quadrant, was used by Europeans in taking the meridional altitude of the sun and stars.
"It is over the fifth!" cried a Gascon loudly, and a comrade came running with waving arms to say that the bolt had pitched eight paces beyond the mark of the five hundred. "Which weapon hath the vantage now?" cried the Brabanter, Strutting proudly about with shouldered arbalest, amid the applause of his companions. "You can overshoot me," said Johnston gently.
On the other hand, they are the sorriest archers that I have ever seen, and cannot so much as aim with the arbalest, to say nought of the long-bow.
He chose a favourable moment to despatch it, as he had despatched the former ones, tied about the quarrel of an arbalest, and he saw Gian Maria's signal for which the letter had provided that the plan would be adopted.
He looked, and there was poor Denys sinking, sinking, weighed down by his wretched arbalest. His face was pale, and his eyes staring wide, and turned despairingly on his dear friend. Gerard uttered a wild cry of love and terror, and made for him, cleaving the water madly; but the next moment Denys was under water. The next, Gerard was after him. The officers knotted a rope and threw the end in.
Gerard pointed ruefully to the dirty sackcloth. The other looked at it with lack lustre eye, and comprehended nought. A Burgundian soldier with his arbalest at his back came peeping over Gerard's shoulder, and seeing what was amiss, laughed so loud that the room rang again, then slapped him on the back and cried, "Courage! le diable est mort."
"The wooden part of the arbalest is beautifully carved with figures; its front extremity is a lion's head holding in its mouth an acorn originally of gold, for which a wooden one is substituted, as is the round stock at the other extremity which was of silver; its lower side has a figure of Bellona, a terminus, &c., carved out of it; its upper, a sphynx, head of Medusa, leaves, and numerous other ornaments upon it; the sides are also beautifully carved, and two steel escutcheons on its sides before the bridge have engraved on them a trophy, and two roses.
Thenceforth, if I saw any cowl of a cordelier as I walked, I even turned and went the other way. I was of no avail against this wolf, whom all men praised, so serviceable was he to the town. Once an arbalest bolt struck my staff from my hand as I walked, and I was fain to take shelter of a corner, yet saw not whence the shot came.
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