We arrived at our guide’s werft in the afternoon, and I was thoroughly fatigued from heat and want of sleep, and a pretty long ride; but Hans kept watch and bartered perpetually. I could find no shade—there scarcely ever is shade in Damara-land—but dropped asleep for two or three hours in the full sun, which made me sick and poorly. Gabriel had recovered a little of the spirits that he had lost by travelling, and was now becoming impudent to the Damaras; he had a quick angry temper when annoyed, (having already tried to stab two of his fellow servants), and now that the Damaras were thronging round us and teasing us a great deal, I was in much alarm lest some imprudence of the lad’s should give them a pretext for an attack. If fighting had once commenced, we should have been as full of assegais as St. Sebastian ever was of arrows, and our guns would have availed but little. Just at this time, as we were all squatting in a ring, except Hans and John St. Helena, who were a little to one side and out of the way, some hungry native dogs paid our saddle-bags a visit, and gnawed at the leather. Gabriel took a rhinoceros-hide whip to frighten them off, and one snarled, but retreated to his master through the middle of the ring. Gabriel rushed, quite daft, after the dog, and gave a tremendous slash with the long supple whip at him, but he quite over-reached his aim, and the chief got the benefit of the cut full on his legs. Another instant and Gabriel was prostrate, while the chief, like a wild beast, glared over him; the muscle of every Damara was on the stretch. Every man had his assegai. My gun lay by my side, but I had sense enough not to clutch at it. I tried with all my power to look as steady and unconcerned as I could, and I must partly thank the sun which had baked my face into a set expression, for success. It was a fearfully anxious time to me, though it lasted but for a moment; gradually the savage’s grasp relaxed, the Damaras around fell back into _nonchalant_ attitudes, and at length the ferocious expression of the chief’s face somewhat smoothed down, and he rose and allowed the disconcerted Gabriel to sneak off, but kept the whip as a trophy, and possibly as a memento of wrongs received. When we were about to start, I made myself as civil as I could, and then gently took hold of the whip, and he allowed me to coax it out of his hand, so all ended well.