“I think so,” Sandy said as he looked over Mr. Cook’s shoulder. “According to what we saw through the sight, we were right on target. The only trouble was, the sight didn’t match up with the barrel of the gun. It’s just sitting on top of the gun and it must have twisted around to one side. Right now your father is trying to get the two of them back together so that what we see is what we shoot at.”
“That makes sense,” Mike conceded. “But how do you know which way to turn the scope? Do you swivel it around to the left or to the right?”
“That’s easy.” Sandy grabbed a twig and drew a small rectangle on the ground. “Here’s your scope. And there—” he ran a dotted straight line out to a spot he marked with an X—“that’s the target. You see the scope’s pointing right at it.” Mike nodded and Sandy went on.
“The four shots all fell about here.” He punched four holes to the right of the X.
“Which means,” Mike added, “that the gun was over to the right in relation to the line of sight through the scope.”
“You got it,” Sandy nodded.
“So,” Mike went on, “in order to get the scope and barrel lined up together, we have to move the cross hairs over to the right.”
“And there are two ways of doing that,” Mr. Cook pointed out. “We can move the cross hairs inside the scope. Or we can move the scope itself.”
“What’s the difference?” Mike asked.
“One is for fine adjustments.” He pointed to a knob on top of the telescopic sight. “See this?”