The two Barbarins entered one of them, and found a naked woman there. "Ismael and I ran," says Bruce, "briskly into the largest, where we saw a man and a woman, both perfectly naked, frightful, emaciated figures, not like the inhabitants of this world. The man was partly sitting on his hams; a child, seemingly of the age to suck, was on a rag at the corner, and the woman looked as if she wished to hide herself. I sprang forward upon the man, and, taking him by the hair of the head, pulled him upon his back on the floor; setting my foot upon his breast, and pointing my knife to his throat, I said to him sternly, 'If you mean to pray, pray quickly, for you have but this moment to live.' The fellow was so frightened he scarce could beg us to spare his life; but the woman, as it afterward appeared, the mother of the sucking child, did not seem to copy the passive disposition of her husband; she ran to the corner of the tent, where was an old lance, with which, I doubt not, she would have sufficiently distinguished herself, but it happened to be entangled with the cloth of the tent, and Ismael felled her to the ground with the butt-end of his blunderbuss, and wrested the lance from her. A violent howl was set up by the remaining woman, like the cries of those in torment. 'Tie them,' said I, 'Ismael; keep them separate, and carry them to the baggage till I settle accounts with this camel-stealer, and then you shall strike their three heads off, where they intended to leave us miserably to perish with hunger; but keep them separate.' While the Barbarins were tying the woman, the one that was the nurse of the child turned to her husband and said, in a most mournful, despairing tone of voice, 'Did I not tell you you would never thrive if you hurt that good man? did I not tell you this would happen for murdering the aga?'" After a long discussion with these people, many of Bruce's party were exceedingly desirous to kill them: and Hagi Ismael was so enraged, that he begged he might have the preference in cutting off one of their heads; but Bruce, animated by Christian feelings, thus addressed his people: "It has appeared to me, that often, since we began this journey, we have been preserved by visible instances of God's protection, when we should have lost our lives if we had gone by the rules of our own judgment only. We are, it is true, of different religions, but we all worship the same God; and, therefore, my determination is to spare the life even of this man, and I will oppose his being put to death by every means in my power."