Bow - Shooting. 869 



habits of your game ; you must be stealthy and sly as an Indian, not 

 the least excitable, patient, watchful, storing up in your memory 

 every item of experience ; and, above all, you must be keen-sighted 

 and steady of hand. For to get within good bow-shot of your game 

 is of the first value, and scarcely second to this is the power of 

 instantly centering all your faculties in the act of shooting. 



To show how a perfectly trained archer manages his approach to 

 very wary game under circumstances of extreme difficulty, let me 

 describe how Will worked his way to within forty yards of a snowy 

 heron. The great white bird was sitting on the top of an old 

 cypress-stump about twenty yards out in a shallow pond, and we 

 were lying on a green tussock six hundred yards away. We had 

 been talking about the great difficulty of getting a shot at him, and 

 finally one of us remarked that it would be evidence of the very 

 highest skill if a hunter should show himself able to outwit that old 

 heron, and get within fair shooting distance of him. Finally, Will 

 determined to try his luck, on condition that he should be considered 

 champion if he succeeded. 



The ground between us and the pond in which the cypress-stump 

 stood was covered with thin, stiff grass, about knee high, with here 

 and there tall tufts of broad-leaved aquatic weeds growing around 

 little puddles of water. Will's method of procedure was to lie down 

 in the grass, and snake himself along from one of these tufts to an- 

 other, which would have been rapid enough and quite easy had the 

 tufts been anything like in a row leading toward the bird ; but this 

 was not the case. Sometimes a space had to be passed, in full view 

 of the heron, where nothing but the thin grass offered any cover. 

 Here Will's patience and skill were put to strongest test. Lying 

 flat in the grass, face downward, he drew himself forward inch by 

 inch (so slowly that his motion was hardly discernible), till a weed- 

 tuft would hide him from the game, then he would slip rapidly up to 

 the tuft and repeat the process of slow, painful progress to another. 

 Caesar and I watched alternately the archer and the bird. Now and 

 then the latter would stretch out its wings and shake them a little, or 

 lift up its head to the full extent of its long neck ; but the movements 

 were not those of fright. As Will nrarrd his game, his motions 

 became still more slow and careful. He zigzagged back and forth 

 from tuft to tuft, gaining only a few feet of distance for many yards 

 55A 



