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. At the edge of this
desert which rolled away without apparent limit we came, however, to
a kind of oasis where there was a strong and beautiful spring of water
that formed a stream which soon lost itself in the surrounding sand.
As we could go no farther, for even if we had wished to do so, and were
able to find water there, the Mazitu refused to accompany us into the
desert, not knowing what else to do, we camped in the oasis and waited.

As it happened, the place was a kind of hunter's paradise, since every
kind of game, large and small, came to the water to drink at night, and
in the daytime browsed upon the saltish grass that at this season of the
year grew plentifully upon the edge of the wilderness.

Amongst other creatures there were elephants in plenty that travelled
hither out of the bushlands we had passed, or sometimes emerged from
the desert itself, suggesting that beyond this waste there lay fertile
country. So numerous were these great beasts indeed that for my part I
hoped earnestly that it would prove impossible for us to continue our