“I knew you could do it by the way you handled your bow and arrow. Your eyes are as straight as mine is, and I watched you as you sent an arrow first one side and then another till you got the exact range, and then it was like kissing your hand: just a pull of the string, off goes the arrow, and down drops the lizard, and a fine one, too. Round that trunk, my lad! There you are, and there he lies, just down in that tuft of grass.”
“Where?” said Rob banteringly. “Why, Shaddy, I thought your eye was better than spy-glasses.”
Shaddy made a dash at the tuft of thick growth beneath the bough where the iguana had stood, searched about, and then rose and took off his cap to give his head a scratch.
“Well, I never!” he said in a tone full of disappointment; “I was as sure as sure that you hit that thing right through.”
He looked round about, and then all at once made a rush at a spot whence came a faint rustling; and the next minute he returned dragging the iguana by the tail, with the half of the arrow through its shoulder.
“Now then,” he cried, “was I right, or was I wrong? He made a big scramble to get away, and hid himself in that bush all but his tail. My word, Mr Rob, sir, what a shot you will make!”
“Nonsense, Shaddy!” said the lad, looking down with a mingling of compunction and pride at his prize.
“Ah, you may call it nonsense, Mr Rob. I calls it skill.”
“Why, it was a mere accident.”
“Hark at him!” cried Shaddy, looking round at the trees as if to call their attention to the lad’s words. “Says it was an accident when I told him to aim straight at the thing’s shoulder, and there’s the arrow right through it from one side to the other, and the poor brute dead as dead.”