One of Robin Hood’s famous band encounters a savage tusker at close range.]
The arrows were quite as important, and their making became a great industry with every race. This was because so many must be carried for each hunt or battle.
Who is not familiar with the chipped flint arrow-heads that the farmer so often turns up with his plow as a relic of the period when Americans were red-skinned instead of white? These arrow-heads have generally a shoulder where the arrow was set into the shaft, there to be bound tightly with sinew or fiber. Many of them are also barbed to hold the flesh.
But the age of machinery was coming on. Once in a while there were glimpses of more powerful and complicated devices to be seen among these simple arms.
A new weapon now came about through warfare. Man has been a savage fighting animal through pretty much all his history, but while he tried to kill the other fellow, he objected to being killed himself.
Therefore he took to wearing armor. During the Middle Ages he piled on more and more, until at last one of the knights could hardly walk, and it took a strong horse to carry him. When such a one fell, he went over with a crash like a tin-peddler’s wagon, and had to be picked up again by some of his men. Such armor would turn most of the arrows. Hence invention got at work again and produced the cross-bow and its bolt. We have already learned how the tough skin of animals brought about the bow; now we see that man’s artificial iron skin caused the invention of the cross-bow.
What was the cross-bow? It was the first real hand-shooting machine. It was another big step toward the day of the rifle. The idea was simple enough. Wooden bows had already been made as strong as the strongest man could pull, and they wished for still stronger ones--steel ones. How could they pull them? At first they mounted them upon a wooden frame and rested one end on the shoulder for a brace. Then they took to pressing the other end against the ground, and using both hands. Next, it was a bright idea to put a stirrup on this end, in order to hold it with the foot.
Still they were not satisfied. “Stronger, stronger!” they clamored; “give us bows which will kill the enemy farther away than he can shoot at us! If we cannot set such bows with both arms let us try our backs!” So they fastened “belt-claws” to their stout girdles and tugged the bow strings into place with their back and leg muscles.