The remark seemed to have been prophetic, for, as the last word passed his lips, a fawn trotted out of a glade right in front of the party and stood as if paralysed with surprise. The captain and Maikar were reduced to much the same condition, for they made no attempt to use their bows.
“Ho!—” exclaimed the former, but he got no further, for at the moment Bladud’s bow twanged, and an arrow quivered in the breast of the fawn, which fell dead without a struggle.
“Well done!” exclaimed the captain heartily. “If such luck always attends you, prince, we shall fare well on our journey.”
“It was not altogether luck,” returned the other. “See you that spot on the bark of yonder tree—about the size of Maikar’s mouth as it now gapes in astonishment?”
“I see it, clear enough—just over the—”
He stopped abruptly, for while he was yet speaking an arrow quivered in the centre of the spot referred to.
After that the captain talked no more about “luck,” and Maikar, shutting his mouth with a snap, as if he felt that no words could do justice to his feelings, sprang up and hastened to commence the operation of flaying and cutting up the fawn.
Having thus provided themselves with food, they spent the rest of the day in preparing it for the journey by drying it in the sun; in making tough and serviceable bowstrings out of the sinews of the fawn, fitting on arrow-heads and feathers, and otherwise arranging for a prolonged march through a country which was entirely unknown to them, both as to its character and its inhabitants.
“It comes into my head,” said the captain, “that Maikar and I must provide ourselves with shields and spears of some sort, for if the people of the land are warlike, we may have to defend ourselves.”
“That is as you say,” returned the prince, rising as he spoke and going towards a long straight bough of a neighbouring tree, on which he had fixed a critical gaze.