ians, who used to shoot backwards more
dexterously than other nations forwards; and also celebrate the skill of
the Scythians in that art, who sent once to Darius, King of Persia, an
ambassador that made him a present of a bird, a frog, a mouse, and five
arrows, without speaking one word; and being asked what those presents
meant, and if he had commission to say anything, answered that he had not;
which puzzled and gravelled Darius very much, till Gobrias, one of the
seven captains that had killed the magi, explained it, saying to Darius:
By these gifts and offerings the Scythians silently tell you that except
the Persians like birds fly up to heaven, or like mice hide themselves near
the centre of the earth, or like frogs dive to the very bottom of ponds and
lakes, they shall be destroyed by the power and arrows of the Scythians.

The noble Pantagruel was, without comparison, more admirable yet in the art
of shooting and darting; for with his dreadful piles and darts, nearly
resembling the huge beams that support the bridges of Nantes, Saumur,
Bergerac, and at Paris the millers' and the changers' bridges, in length,
size, weight, and iron-work, he at a mile's distance would open an oyster
and never touch the edges; he would snuff a candle without putting it out;
would shoot a magpie in the eye; take off a boot's under-sole, or a
riding-hood's lining, without soiling them a bit; turn over every leaf
of Friar John's breviary, one after another, and not tear one.

With such darts, of which there was good store in the ship, at the first
blow he ran the physeter in at the forehead so furiously that he pierced
both its jaws and tongue; so that from that time to this it no more opened
its guttural trapdoor, nor drew and spouted water. At the second blow he
put out its right eye, and at the third its left; and we had all the
pleasure to see the physeter bearing those three horns in its forehead,
somewhat leaning forwards in an equilateral triangle.

Meanwhile it turned about to and fro, staggering and straying like one
stunned, blinded, and taking his leave of the world. Pantagruel, not
satisfied with this, let fly another dart, which took the monster under the
tail likewise sloping; then with three other on the chine, in a
perpendicular line, divided its flank from the tail to the snout at an
equal distance. Then he larded it with fifty on one side, and after that,
to make even work, he darted as many on its other side; so