"Wear the Great Medicine, Baas, wear it; part with the liver inside you
before you part with that, Baas. It may not be as pretty or smell as
sweet as a woman's hair in a little gold bottle, but it is much more
useful. The sight of the woman's hair will only make you sick in your
stomach and cause you to remember a lot of things which you had much
better forget, but the Great Medicine, or rather Zikali who is in it,
will keep the assegais and sickness out of you and turn back bad magic
on to the heads of those who sent it, and always bring us plenty to eat
and perhaps, if we are lucky, a little to drink too sometimes."

"Go away," I said, "I want to wash."

"Yes, Baas, but with the Baas's leave I will sit on the other side of
that bush with the gun--not to look at the Baas without his clothes,
because white people are always so ugly that it makes me feel ill to see
them undressed, also because--the Baas will forgive me--but because they
smell. No, not for that, but just to see that no other snake comes."

"Get out of the road, you dirty little scoundrel, and stop your
impudence," I said, lifting my foot suggestively.

Thereon he scooted with a subdued grin round the other side of the bush,
whence as I knew well he kept his eye fixed on me to be sure that I made
no further attempt to take off the Great Medicine.

Now of this talisman I may as well say at once that I am no believer
in it or its precious influences. Therefore, although it was useful
sometimes, notably twice when Umslopogaas was concerned, I do not know
whether personally I should have done better or worse upon that journey
if I had thrown it into the pool.

It is true, however, that until quite the end of this history when
it became needful to do so to save another, I never made any further
attempt to remove it from my neck, not even when it rubbed a sore in my
skin, because I did not wish to offend the prejudices of Hans.

It is true, moreover, that this hideous ivory had a reputation which
stretched very far from the place where it was made and was regarded
with great reverence by all kinds of queer people, even by the Amahagger
themselves, of whom presently, as they say in pedigrees, a fact of which
I found sundry proofs. Indeed, I saw a first example of it when a little
while later I met that great warrior, Umslopogaas, Chief of the People
of the Axe.

For, after determining firmly, for reasons which I will set out, that
I would not visit th