But the most precious of the treasures in the chest were eight or ten
small sheets of parchment, each daintily rolled and fastened with a
ribbon, letters from Aurora Thyma, who had also given him the ivory
cross on the wall. It was of ancient workmanship, a relic of the old
world. A compass, a few small tools (valuable because preserved for so
many years, and not now to be obtained for any consideration), and a
magnifying glass, a relic also of the ancients, completed the contents
of the chest.
Upon a low table by the bedstead were a flint and steel and tinder, and
an earthenware oil lamp, not intended to be carried about. There, too,
lay his knife, with a buckhorn hilt, worn by everyone in the belt, and
his forester's axe, a small tool, but extremely useful in the woods,
without which, indeed, progress was often impossible. These were in the
belt, which, as he undressed, he had cast upon the table, together with
his purse, in which were about a dozen copper coins, not very regular in
shape, and stamped on one side only. The table was formed of two short
hewn planks, scarcely smoothed, raised on similar planks (on edge) at
each end, in fact, a larger form.
From a peg driven into the wall hung a disc of brass by a thin leathern
lace; this disc, polished to the last degree, answered as a mirror. The
only other piece of furniture, if so it could be called, was a block of
wood at the side of the table, used as a chair. In the corner, between
the table and the window, stood a long yew bow, and a quiver full of
arrows ready for immediate use, besides which three or four sheaves lay
on the floor. A crossbow hung on a wooden peg; the bow was of wood, and,
therefore, not very powerful; bolts and square-headed quarrels were
scattered carelessly on the floor under it.
Six or seven slender darts used for casting with the hand, as javelins,
stood in another corner by the door, and two stouter boar spears. By the
wall a heap of nets lay in apparent confusion, some used for partridges,
some of coarse twine for bush-hens, another, lying a little apart, for
fishes. Near these the component parts of two turkey-traps were strewn
about, together with a small round shield or targe, such as are used by
swordsmen, snares of wire, and, in an open box, several chisels, gouges,
and other tools.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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