"Yet, it seems I must do what I can," said Pŭl-Yūn, sighing again, "and if, by good luck, I can make these little-boys' spears fly straighter and stick deeper than my cousin's, what will ye say?"
Said the grey chief, "My son's son, whilst thou hast been away we have had omens of change and of trouble. Our enemies, the White Wolves and the men of the Lynx Totem have begun to encroach yet more upon our hunting-grounds; they have taken game from our traps, they waylay and wound our young men hunting singly. We have given up lone hunting, we hunt in couples or threesomes. They, or we must move on. But, it needs fighting to clear the matter. And,—and—I am grown better at council than at the chase. Strong am I still, but I stiffen, and am slower of foot than my wont. The Sun-Men have always had a war-chief who could lead them. The tribe,—the young men, are asking for one. Thy cousin claims the post. What can I say to thy question?"
To Pŭl-Yūn's thinking there was more than physical weakness in this appeal, he faced the old man silently but with a steady confidence in his eye which went some way to restore the senior's shaken courage, who took fresh breath and went on—
"The spear, my son, is the only weapon, and the farther it is cast and the deeper it is driven the better the warrior. Yonder is the mark. Get thee to thy spears. I have spoken."
The little dart was still travelling its round, exciting amazement, amusement and curiosity as it went. It returned to Pŭl-Yūn, he examined its point and feather (the absurd little feather, fingered by so many, understood by him alone), all with an exasperating deliberation and gentle cheerfulness as of a man regaining his spirits. The tent-folds behind him shook and forth came the foreign woman, his wife, Dêh-Yān, as he had been heard to address her, bringing in hand—what?—surely not more spears, for there were others in the skin pouch upon his back, yet, she bore to him a staff stouter, heavier and longer than any assegai, and, whereas a well-made assegai is thickest three hands' breadths behind the head and thence tapers both ways, this clumsy shaft was thickest in the middle. An impossible, headless weapon, thought the tribe craning to see.
Pŭl-Yūn took the staff, tossed and caught it, shook it a little, whilst the Little Moon woman unwound a stout cord of twisted sinew looped at either end. Watched intently by the tribe the man threaded both loops upon the staff, fitted the last to a notch at one end of it, which end he turned under and set his left foot upon; then, holding the staff erect and close to his left side, he, gripping its upper end with his right, swiftly and strongly bent it over his knee and hip whilst with his left hand sliding the second loop to its resting-place in the second notch which was now close beside his chin.
'Twas done in a moment, and the thing stood confessed no weapon at all, but just a drilling-bow, an out-sized, clumsy tool. Honk-Ah led the laugh.
But Pŭl-Yūn unmoved and passively grave, was emptying at his feet the skin pouch aforesaid, and lo! there lay more boys' assegais, weak, light and decked with feathers where no feathers should be. The laughter did not cease when the man chose three and approached the scratch thus armed, for the bow-drill which he carried his critics regarded as a mere encumbrance, a thing as foreign to the business in hand as a fishing-line. Taking his stand upon the crease itself, and making no preparation for the usual run before throwing, the young chief gripped the bent bow-drill left-handedly by its midmost stoutest part, laid a dart across the wood, and his left forefinger over that dart, then, fitting a hitherto unnoticed notch in the end of that dart to the string, he gripped both dart and sinew and drew both away from the bending wood whilst raising the whole apparatus with his extended left hand. Back and back went his right hand, stiffly and more stiffly extended his left arm, until the chert head of the dart stuck out beyond the left thumb, whilst the notched and feathered tail, still fast against the sinew-cord, was level with the man's ear. Thus he stood poised, tense and silent for a breath, the last cackle of derisive laughter died; what did all this mean? Twang!—something hummed like the wings of the great fawn-coloured mountain swift when he sweeps a beetle from a grass-blade close to one's knee and is a hundred strides away before one knows what he had done. Pŭl-Yūn was standing exactly as he had stood before the sound, save that the string had escaped from his hand and the bow-drill had gone straight again. What had become of the dart? 'Twas gone, yet none had seen it go. At such close range, and from such a powerful bow, an arrow travels nearly level and exceedingly fast. The eyes of the tribe, fixed upon the man, and awaiting the vehement action of the spear-thrower, had failed altogether to pursue the flight of the missile.
"Wah! when is he going to throw?" "Where has it gone?" "When did he cast?" "How came it there?" for lo! in the target beside the best spear of Honk-Ah stood the dart of Pŭl-Yūn, quite as well-centred and more deeply fixed.
A buzz of subdued clamour arose and was instantly hushed, for the marksman's second dart was in his hand, and again that queer, clumsy domestic implement, hitherto reserved for the girl who made fire, or the eye of a needle, was bending again. Twang!—again that new, keen sound and all eyes jumped, and again failed to follow that unnaturally low, swift flight. They looked above it, looked where a spear would have been, and whilst they stared—thuck!—a second dart was standing in the target, not a hand's-breadth away from the first, and as deeply imbedded.