But Marzak shrugged his shoulders with make-believe contempt. “I knew he would refuse the mark I set,” said he. “As for the olive-branch, it is so large a butt that a child could not miss it at this distance.”
“If a child could not, then thou shouldst not,” said Sakr-el-Bahr, who had so placed himself that his body was now between Marzak and the palmetto bale. “Let us see thee hit it, O Marzak.” And as he spoke he raised his cross-bow, and scarcely seeming to take aim, he loosed his shaft. It flashed away to be checked, quivering, in the branch he had indicated.
A chorus of applause and admiration greeted the shot, and drew the attention of all the crew to what was toward.
Marzak tightened his lips, realizing how completely he had been outwitted. Willy-nilly he must now shoot at that mark. The choice had been taken out of his hands by Sakr-el-Bahr. He never doubted that he must cover himself with ridicule in the performance, and that there he would be constrained to abandon this pretended match.
“By the Koran,” said Biskaine, “thou’lt need all thy skill to equal such a shot, Marzak.”
“’Twas not the mark I chose,” replied Marzak sullenly.
“Thou wert the challenger, O Marzak,” his father reminded him. “Therefore the choice of mark was his. He chose a man’s mark, and by the beard of Mohammed, he showed us a man’s shot.”
Marzak would have flung the bow from him in that moment, abandoning the method he had chosen to investigate the contents of that suspicious palmetto bale; but he realized that such a course must now cover him with scorn. Slowly he levelled his bow at that distant mark.
“Have a care of the sentinel on the hill-top,” Sakr-el-Bahr admonished him, provoking a titter.
Angrily the youth drew the bow. The cord hummed, and the shaft sped to bury itself in the hill’s flank a dozen yards from the mark.