Crawford chuckled ruefully and held up a hand to stem the tide. "Hold it, hold it," he said. "These are special weapons, and, after all, we've got to keep those crowds together long enough to bore them to the point where they go home."
Abe came up with an armful of what looked something like tent-poles. "The quarterstaffs, eh, Homer?"
"Um-m-m," Crawford said. "Under the circumstances."
"Quarterstaffs?" Cliff Jackson ejaculated.
Abe grinned at him. "Man, just call them pilgrim's staffs. The least obnoxious looking weapon in the world." He looked at Cliff and Jake. "You two cats been checked out on quarterstaffs?"
Jake said, "The more I talk to you people, the less I seem to understand what's going on. Aren't quarterstaffs what, well, Robin Hood and his Merry Men used to fight with?"
"That's right," Homer said. He took one from Abe and grasping it expertly with two hands whirled it about, getting its balance. Then suddenly, he drooped, leaning on it as a staff. His face expressed weariness. His youth and virility seemed to drop away and suddenly he was an aged religious pilgrim as seen throughout the Moslem world.
"I'll be damned," Cliff blurted. "Oop, sorry Isobel."
"I'll be damned, too," Isobel said. "What in the world can you do with that, Homer? I was thinking in terms of you mowing those people down with machine guns or something."
Crawford stood erect again laughingly, and demonstrated. "It's probably the most efficient handweapon ever devised. The weapon of the British yeoman. With one of these you can disarm a swordsman in a matter of seconds. A good man with a quarterstaff can unhorse a knight in armor and batter him to death, in a minute or so. The only other handweapon capable of countering it is another quarterstaff. Watch this, with the favorable two-hand leverage the ends of the staff can be made to move at invisibly high speeds."