In Ancient Greek mythology, after Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter, the Greeks set sail that very day and, with favorable winds all the way, arrived at the island of Chryse to replenish their water supplies.
A master archer named Philoctetes did not work alongside the others. He was a king's son and Hercules's disciple. Having heard that the island was where Jason of the Argonauts had once offered sacrifice to Athena during his voyage, he searched everywhere for an altar and eventually found one.
Delighted, he presented an offering to the goddess, only for a venomous snake to dart out from a pile of stones. The snake often guarded that sacred place.
It bit Philoctetes on the ankle. Before long, the wound festered and gave off a foul stench. The passing soldiers could not endure either the smell or Philoctetes's screams, and after discussion, the Achaeans decided to abandon him, because his cries would shake the Greeks' morale.
They gave Philoctetes a sleeping draught, loaded him onto a small boat, left him in a cave with enough clothing and food, then sailed the boat back to rejoin the fleet.
What they did not know was that, in abandoning that archer, they had also lost the art of shooting arrows without fail.
Georgiana looked at the Vanishing Cabinet before her and walked around it once.
She did not know why that myth had come to mind. Wood was needed in many places—not only for an archer's arrows, but also for furniture and seafaring ships.
The preamble to the Statute of Charitable Uses did not explicitly state that donations to the military were lawful "charitable uses." In that era, every boy from seven to seventeen had to possess a bow and arrows, supplied by his father and the master he served. Charitable