Pickaxe
Chapter the Eleventh
THE STORY OF TIG: How Tig got his First Bow and Arrows
WHEN first Tig and his friends played at hunting, they mostly had bows and arrows of their own making. Tig had made his own bow, but it was not a good one. He made it of a hazel sapling which was not a very tough piece of wood, and not well balanced, as one end was thicker than the other. His bowstring was one that his father had thrown away, and it was old and frayed.
But one day Garff was sitting outside the hut shaping a shaft for a spear with his flint knife, and he saw Tig trying to shoot with his weak little bow. So he called him, and said: “Bring it hither to me, little son. It is a poor thing, this bow of thine. One of these days we must make thee a better.”
And Tig said: “Make it now, Dad.”
So Garff laid aside his spear, and he went into the hut and brought out several lengths of wood from his store, and he looked them over carefully. He chose one—a piece of a tough ash sapling, about four feet long. Then he set to work to whittle this with his knife until he had shaped it to the right form—thickest in the middle and tapering towards the ends, rounded in front and flattened at the back; and he scraped it smooth all over. Then he worked some notches at each end, using for this a little saw made of flint; and he fitted a new bowstring to it, and gave Tig his first real bow. Of course this was not done all in a day, but Garff worked at it between whiles when he had time.