He had a name for each gun. One -- a double
four-bore belonging to Sir Henry -- was the Thunderer; another,
my 500 Express, which had a peculiarly sharp report, was 'the
little one who spoke like a whip'; the Winchester repeaters were
'the women, who talked so fast that you could not tell one word
from another'; the six Martinis were 'the common people'; and
so on with them all. It was very curious to hear him addressing
each gun as he cleaned it, as though it were an individual, and
in a vein of the quaintest humour. He did the same with his
battle-axe, which he seemed to look upon as an intimate friend,
and to which he would at times talk by the hour, going over all
his old adventures with it -- and dreadful enough some of them
were. By a piece of grim humour, he had named this axe 'Inkosi-kaas',
which is the Zulu word for chieftainess. For a long while I
could not make out why he gave it such a name, and at last I
asked him, when he informed me that the axe was very evidently
feminine, because of her womanly habit of prying very deep into
things, and that she was clearly a chieftainess because all men
fell down before her, struck dumb at the sight of her beauty
and power. In the same way he would consult 'Inkosi-kaas' if
in any dilemma; and when I asked him why he did so, he informed
me it was because she must needs be wise, having 'looked into
so many people's brains'.
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