Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/393

Rh half a score of the elders lounged up and down with critical eyes, and a word of rough praise or of curt censure for the marksmen. Behind stood knots of Gascon and Brabant crossbowmen from the companies of Ortingoond of La Nuit, leaning upon their unsightly weapons and watching the practice of the Englishmen.

'A good shot, Hewett, a good shot!' said old Johnston to a young bowman who stood with his bow in his left hand, gazing with parted lips after his flying shaft. 'You see, she finds the ring, as I knew she would from the moment that your string twanged.'

'Loose it easy, steady, and yet sharp,' said Aylward. 'By my hilt! mon gar, it is very well when you do but shoot at a shield, but when there is a man behind the shield, and he rides at you with wave of sword and glint of eyes from behind his vizor, you may find him a less easy mark.'

'It is a mark that I have found before now,' answered the young bowman.

'And shall again, camarade, I doubt not. But holà! Johnston, who is this who holds his bow like a crow-keeper?'

'It is Silas Peterson, of Horsham. Do not wink with one eye and look with the other, Silas, and do not hop and dance after you shoot, with your tongue out, for that will not speed it upon its way. Stand straight and firm, as God made you. Move not the bow-arm, and steady with the drawing hand.'

'I' faith,' said Black Simon, 'I am a spearman myself and am more fitted for hand-strokes than for such work as this. Yet I have spent my days among bowmen, and I have seen many a brave shaft sped. I will not say but that we have some good marksmen here, and that this Company would be accounted a fine body of archers at any time or place. Yet I do not see any men who bend so strong a bow or shoot as true a shaft as those whom I have known.'

'You say sooth,' said Johnston, turning his seamed and grizzled face upon the man-at-arms. 'See yonder,' he added, pointing to a bombard which lay within the camp: