“No; put it upstairs,” said Mark, taking it from him. So the boomerang was added to the collection in the bench-room. A crossbow was the next thing, and they made the stock from a stout elder branch, because when the pith was taken out, it left a groove for the bolt to slide up. The bow was a thick briar, and the bolt flew thirty or forty yards, but it did not answer, and they could hit nothing with it. A crossbow requires delicate adjustment, and to act well, must be made almost as accurately as a rifle.
They shot a hundred times at the sparrows on the roof, who were no sooner driven off than they came back like flies, but never hit one; so the crossbow was hung up with the boomerang. Bevis, from much practice, could shoot far better than that with his bow and arrow. He stuck up an apple on a stick, and after six or seven trials hit it at twenty yards. He could always hit a tree. Mark was afraid to throw his bone-headed harpoon at a tree, lest the head should break off; but he had another, without a bone head, to cast; and he too could generally hit a tree.
“Now we are quite savages,” said Bevis, one evening, as they sat up in the bench-room, and the sun went down red and fiery, opposite the little window, filling the room with a red glow and gleaming on their faces. It put a touch of colour on the pears, which were growing large, just outside the window, as if they were ripe towards the sunset. The boomerang on the wall was lit up with the light; so was a parcel of canvas, on the floor, which they had bought at Latten town, for the sails of their ship.
There was an oyster barrel under the bench, which was to contain the fresh water for their voyage, and there had been much discussion as to how they were to put a new head to it.
“We ought to see ourselves on the shore with spears and things when we are sailing round,” said Mark.
“So as not to be able to land for fear.”
“Poisoned arrows,” said Mark. “I say, how stupid! we have not got any poison.”
“No more we have. We must get a lot of poison.”
“Curious plants nobody knows anything about but us.”
“Nobody ever heard of them.”