I took some arrows, and endeavoured to point them with porcupine quills.
Franz came to beg me make a little bow and arrow for him to shoot with, while Fritz asked my advice about the tiger-cat skin and the cases he was to contrive from it. Jack assisted with the arrow-making, and inserting a sharp spine at one end of each reed made it fast with pack-thread, and began to wish for glue to ensure its remaining firm.
`Oh, Jack! Mamma's soup is as sticky as anything!' cried Franz. `Shall
I run and ask for a cake of it?'
`No, no, little goose! Better look for some real glue in the tool-box.'
`There he will find glue, to be sure,' said I, `and the soup would scarcely have answered your purpose. But Jack, my boy, I do not like to hear you ridicule your little brother's idea. Some of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of thoughts which originally appeared no wiser than his.'
While thus directing and assisting my sons, we were surprised by hearing a shot just over heads; at the same moment two small birds fell dead at our feet, and looking up, we beheld Ernest among the branches, as bending his face joyfully towards us, he cried, `Well hit! Well hit! A good shot, wasn't it?'
Then slipping down the ladder, and picking up the birds, he brought them to me. One was a kind of thrush, the other a small dove called the ortolan, and esteemed a very great delicacy on account of its exquisite flavour.
As the figs on which these birds came to feed were only just beginning to ripen, it was probable that they would soon flock in numbers to our trees; and by waiting until we could procure them in large quantities, we might provide ourselves with valuable food for the rainy season, by placing them, when half cooked, in casks with melted lard or butter poured over them.
By this time Jack had pointed a good supply of arrows, and industriously practised archery. I finished the bow and arrows for Franz, and expected to be left in peace; but the young man next demanded a quiver, and I had to invent that also, to complete his equipment. It was easily done by stripping a piece of bark from a small tree, fitting a flat side and a bottom to it, and then a string. Attaching it to his shoulders, the youthful hunter filled it with arrows and went off; looking, as his mother said, like an innocent little Cupid, bent on conquest.
Not long after this, we were summoned to dinner, and all right willingly obeyed the call.