SEC. 20. If any person or persons, in this territory, shall make an assault with a deadly weapon, instrument, or other thing, with an intent to inflict upon the person of another, a bodily injury, where no considerable provocation appears, or where the circumstances of the assault show an abandoned and malignant heart, shall be adjudged to be a high misdemeanor, and any person who shall be duly convicted thereof, shall be fined in any sum not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisoned in the penitentiary, at hard labor, for a term not exceeding three years.