SHOOTING IN LITERATURE
Most extraordinary ideas prevail amongst writers as to shooting in general and especially pistol shooting.
One novelist makes his hero see “a flame zigzagging in the darkness,” he, not troubling to ascertain who was carrying the light, friend or foe, without hesitation “drew his pistol, took an aim of a good thirty seconds’ duration and fired straight at the flame.”
To aim “straight at” a moving object is the way to miss it, and if the aim is taken for thirty seconds the hand gets so shaky that a miss is certain, but most marvellous thing in literature, the hero does miss.
Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun.” He was wrong. The author who makes his hero miss is absolutely unique; in all other literature the hero never misses, none of Homer’s heroes miss, nor does David miss Goliath nor William Tell miss the apple nor Robin Hood the deer.
This unique hero takes an even longer aim, later. He hears a horse galloping towards him and aims for ten minutes at a point two inches above where he expected the horse’s head to appear round a rock. I suppose he aimed two inches high so as to allow for the fatigue to his arm during the ten minutes’ aim, causing it to slightly sag down.
I expect the next novel I read, the hero, knowing his enemy will arrive in a month’s time, will keep an aim well above the railway station till he arrives.
Evidently the idea is the longer the aim the more accurate it is, forgetting that human muscles and eyesight tire, and that fast moving objects cannot be hit with a stationary aim.
I have known a stag turn and go the opposite direction whilst a man was aiming at a tree he expected it to pass.
It is amusing how, in a play, the hero after he has made the villain desist by pointing a revolver at him, contemptuously throws the revolver on the sofa and walks away.