"I have not, nor did I ever see one," replied the Indian lad. "I killed it with my throw-stick."
"Throw-stick?" repeated Todd, with a puzzled air. "What is a throw-stick?"
NANAHE EXHIBITS HIS THROW-STICK.
For answer Nanahe handed him a stick of tough wood two feet long, about as many inches in diameter, and fitted at one end with a handle in which were two finger-holes. The weapon was completed by a slender lance having a barbed head formed from a splinter of obsidian, keen-edged as a razor. Nanahe laid this lance on a flattened side of the throw-stick, with its butt resting against a bit of bone that was embedded in the wood near the upper end of the weapon. The lance was held in position by the thumb and one free finger of the thrower's right hand until the act of throwing was begun. Then it was released and sent whizzing through the air with such force that it fell to the ground more than one hundred yards away.
"Now I understand," cried Todd, "for I have often thrown apples from the end of a stick in just that way. But surely you can't throw the lance with any degree of accuracy."
Without replying, Nanahe smilingly selected half a dozen of the stone-headed shafts, and hurling one after another with inconceivable quickness at a tree some thirty yards from him, set them quivering in its bark so close together that a ring two inches in diameter would have encircled them all.
"Good enough!" cried Todd, enthusiastically. "I give in, and acknowledge that your throw-stick is a wonderfully effective weapon. But where did you pick up the idea?"
"The Professor found some of them in the cliff houses," answered Nanahe. "He says that in very ancient times all hunters used them, and that even now they are common among people called Eskimos who live in a far-away land of ice and snow. He taught me how to use them, and this one I made myself."
"Well," said Todd, "I begin to see how people get along and manage to live comfortably in a place like this; but it certainly takes genius to do it. As for myself, I know I should have starved long before I learned to kill a deer or even a rabbit with any such primitive weapon as a throw-stick. Now let's get back to the castle, for it must be supper-time, and after that I am to hear the Professor's strange story."