SHORT, SOMEWHAT DRY, BUT IMPORTANT
We must compress into three or four pages the labours and results of
four busy months, during which by frequent experiment, and incessant
practice these two young creatures worked at, and worked out the
mechanics of their discovery.
It was an opportunity of almost incalculable infrequency. Consider, I
beseech you. Your savage, a man of a hunting tribe, lives normally from
hand to mouth. Is game abundant and his hunting successful he gorges
to repletion and sleeps long and heavily. Is food scarce he hunts
the harder, sleeps lightly, eats sparingly, and has in prosperity no
incentive, and in adversity no leisure for protracted and systematic
experiment, even if he should find the impulse within himself, and be
upheld by the applause and co-operation of his tribe.
It is doubtful if the combination of rare and delicate qualities which
go to the making of an inventor present themselves once in a thousand
generations of savage men, and how much rarer still must be that
general recognition from his fellows without which a savage can effect
nothing permanent. Even the privacy, which is hardly less essential
than sympathy for a tentative effort, is wanting, for a savage lives
in public, and the initial failures of the inventor not seldom in our
own times expose him to the pitiless raillery of his contemporaries, a
blighting, sterilising ridicule to which the child-nature of primitive
man was certainly not less sensitive than are the natures of monkeys,
dogs and children.
The steadfast mind that can ignore and outstay the gibes of neighbours
is not too common to-day, and was probably very rare indeed in that
remote and ancient world of which my tale tells.
That an armourer should work behind locked doors, and that it is folly
to show unfinished work to a bairn are excellent adages. But, savages
are all bairns; indeed, among primitive peoples the environment is so
unfavourable for invention that one might almost say that a savage
never invents anything, and even in the case of his stumbling upon a
promising novelty, its unfamiliarity condemns it in the eyes of his
comrades, if not in his own.
Only in the excessively rare event of a reforming chief can any advance
be registered. And how seldom does such a prodigy arise! The stars in
their courses fight against such an avatar!--We, the English of the
twentieth century, are, take us all round, as open to reason and as
receptive to the New Idea as any folk upon this earth, or any that
ever trod it; what is more, we are accustomed to reforms, we await
them with expectancy if not with equanimity, we know full well that
certain of our venerable institutions stand in need of tinkering, but
we never dream that the impulse shall come from above. A codifying, or
land-transfer-simplifying Lord Chancellor, or a reforming or unifying
Archbishop is incredible. The processes by which such men climb to
their posts disable their minds from criticising a system which has
justified itself in their persons. Nor is it likely that a sachem will
be impatient of a state of affairs which has landed him at the summit
of his ambitions. A Peter the Great comes but once in an æon.
Here, however, in this snow-bound glen, were just that assemblage of
conditions which stimulate and protect the inventor whilst perfecting
his invention. The store of frozen bear-meat secured leisure. There
had been sufficient initial success to encourage continued experiment.
The companionship of two united hearts provided the needful sympathy;
nor was the touch of emulation wanting. The august mountains kept the
ring, their snowy silence excluding the hee-haws of jealous ignorance.
Heavens, how these children worked!--Size, material, method of use,
the best position, trajectories,--everything was an open question;
everything had to be mastered by trial, by competition, by comparison.
Observe, there was absolutely no past, no tribal lore to handicap or
guide. How they chattered! As to arrows, now,--should they head them
with bone or with stone?--How fledged?--How straightened?--Of what
length?--This brought on the bow, its size, its weight, its parent
tree; wych-elm, ash, or cornel?
Pŭl-Yūn leaned to something small and short, handy for wood-work;
but after being consistently out-shot by longer weapons of the
Master-Girl's choosing, propelled by a longer bow, gave way after some
sulking.
* * * * *
He was by way of learning. And so was she, for never again during
those four months did she shoot her best in his presence, or to
his knowledge. Thenceforward she would essay her longest flights in
private, and found that the extreme range which contented her man was
far from being the limit of her own bow. But this knowledge she kept to
herself.
Pŭl-Yūn was as yet a poor walker, but his infirmity in no wise hindered
his archery, rather did it help, in that it tied him to the butts. His
industry, his zeal to excel were tremendous, and there was reason that
he should toil terribly to perfect himself in this novel art before
presenting himself again to his tribe. He had by now determined, at
Dêh-Yān's earnest intercession, and as the reasoned result of a couple
of months' watching of his shafts, to discard his spears. It was a
momentous decision; who shall say what it meant to the war-chief of a
small tribe hard-pressed by stronger and better armed neighbours?
Conceive then, this human pair, mere youngsters according to our
reckoning, cut off from the world, applying every faculty which they
possessed to the study of their art. Doubt not that when once they had
come to an agreement as to details, progress was consistent and rapid;
and as week by week their smaller and yet smaller marks were stricken
at lengthened ranges, their exultation rose and hardened to solid
confidence.
So wore the days and the months of winter.
[Illustration: PURSUED]