– Second: the windlass. Between one of your bolts and the next there stretches an interval of time; you cannot present yourself to your enemy in the open, nor face him on bare ground.

– Third: should rain or any other water strike you so that your string is soaked, your owner finds himself utterly unable to shoot you. You become no better than a lifeless stick of wood.

– Moreover: the foot-bow’s power is at its peak only at the very first shot; the second is weaker than the first, the third weaker than the second, the fourth weaker than the third, and so it continues until its strength and firmness are completely spent (1). Its steadiness unravels bit by bit until (2) the string lies limp along the groove. If anyone looses it then, it achieves nothing and may even kill the shooter. Should he unstring it and retwist the cord, as some do, the same weakness overtakes it the second time; the bow remains mired in feebleness. Twist the string yet again and it grows (3) exceedingly frail—its power may fail altogether or the bow may break—so that necessity forces the archer to take up another bow or to sit down in defeat.

How vast the difference between one who can shoot the entire day with a hand-drawn bow—whose arrows never change, whose force never weakens, whose last shaft flies as surely as the first—and one who shoots with a bow whose rule extends only to the first arrow, still commands at the second, then crumbles (4) at the third, deteriorates at the fourth, and by the fifth is like a tottering weakling!