Dispersion of his followers.

The effect was electrical.  The tumult of the combat had ceased:  not another spear was thrown, not another yell was uttered.  Native after native dropped away and noiselessly disappeared.  I stood alone with the wretched savage dying before me, and my two men close to me behind the rocks, in the attitude of deep attention; and as I looked round upon the dark rocks and forests, now suddenly silent and lifeless but for the sight of the unhappy being who lay on the ground before me, I could have thought that the whole affair had been a horrid dream.

For a second or two I gazed on the scene and then returned to my former position.  I took my gun from Coles, which he had not yet finished loading, and gave him the rifle.  I then went up to the other man, and gave him two balls to hold, but when I placed them in his hands they rolled upon the earth—­he could not hold them, for he was completely paralysed with terror, and they fell through his fingers; the perspiration streamed from every pore; he was ghastly pale and trembled from head to foot; his limbs refused their functions; his eyes were so fixed in the direction in which the natives had disappeared that I could draw his attention to nothing else; and he still continued repeating, “Good God, sir! look at them, look at them.”

The natives had all now concealed themselves, but they were not far off.  Presently the wounded man made an effort to raise himself slowly from the ground:  some of them instantly came from behind the rocks and trees, without their spears, crowding round him with the greatest tenderness and solicitude; two passed their arms round him, his head drooped senselessly upon his chest, and with hurried steps the whole party wound their way through the forest, their black forms being scarcely distinguishable from the charred trunks of the trees as they receded in the distance.

To have fired upon the other natives when they returned for the wounded man would, in my belief, have been an unnecessary piece of barbarity.  I already felt deeply the death of him I had been compelled to shoot:  and I believe that when a fellow-creature falls by one’s hand, even in a single combat rendered unavoidable in self-defence, it is impossible not sincerely to regret the force of so cruel a necessity.

Return wounded.

I had now time to attend to my own state and that of my men, and found that they were uninjured.  I had been severely wounded in the hip; another spear had just cut my right arm, and a third had deeply indented my powder-flask, whilst lying in a haversack, immediately over my stomach.  The men were not, up to this moment, aware of my being wounded, as I had thought it better to conceal this circumstance from them as long as I could.  The natives had gone off in the direction of the tents; and as I felt doubtful whether they might seize upon a favourable opportunity to surprise the party there, and thus revenge their defeat, I was anxious to reach the encampment as soon as possible.  We therefore bound up my wound as well as we could, picked up the spear which I had drawn out from my hip, and started homewards.