Once they attacked us and killed two of the Mazitu with those horrid arrows, against the venom of which no remedy that we had in our medicine chest proved of any avail.

On this occasion Savage exhibited his courage if not his discretion, for rushing out of our thorn fence, after missing a bushmen with both barrels at a distance of five yards--he was, I think, the worst shot I ever saw--he seized the little viper with his hands and dragged him back to camp.

How Savage escaped with his life I do not know, for one poisoned arrow went through his hat and stuck in his hair and another just grazed his leg without drawing blood.
This valorous deed was of great service to us, since we were able through Hans, who knew something of the bushmen's language, to explain to our prisoner that if we were shot at again he would be hung.

This information he contrived to shout, or rather to squeak and grunt, to his amiable tribe, of which it appeared he was a kind of chief, with the result that we were no more molested.

Later, when we were clear of the bushmen country, we let him depart, which he did with great rapidity.
By degrees the land grew more and more barren and utterly devoid of inhabitants, till at last it merged into desert.