Somewhat later the governor having business in London took Bevis and Mark with him. They stayed a week at Bevis’s grandpa’s, and while there, for Bevis’s special pleasure, the governor went with them one evening to see a celebrated American sportsman shoot. This pale-face from the land of the Indians quite upset and revolutionised all their ideas of how to handle a gun.
The perfection of first-rate English weapons, their accuracy and almost absolute safety, has obtained for them pre-eminence over all other fire-arms. It was in England that the art of shooting was slowly brought to the delicate precision which enables the sportsman to kill right and left in instantaneous succession. But why then did this one thing escape discovery? Why have so many thousands shot season after season without hitting upon it? The governor did not like his philosophy of the gun upset in this way; his cherished traditions overthrown.
There the American stood on the stage as calm as a tenor singer, and every time the glass ball was thrown up, smash! a single rifle-bullet broke it. A single bullet, not shot, not a cartridge which opens out and makes a pattern a foot in diameter, but one single bullet. It was shooting flying with a rifle. It was not once, twice, thrice, but tens and hundreds. The man’s accuracy of aim seemed inexhaustible.
Never was there any exhibition so entirely genuine: never anything so bewildering to the gunner bred in the traditionary system of shooting. A thousand rifle-bullets pattering in succession on glass balls jerked in the air would have been past credibility if it had not been witnessed by crowds. The word of a few spectators only would have been disbelieved.
“It is quite upside down, this,” said the governor. “Really one would think the glass balls burst of themselves.”
“He could shoot partridges flying with his rifle,” said Mark.
Bevis said nothing but sat absorbed in the exhibition till the last shot was fired and they rose from their seats, then he said, “I know how he did it!”
“Nonsense.”
“I’m sure I do: I saw it in a minute.”
“Well, how then?”