'Three o'clock,' he said: 'we
must begin to move at half-past.'
I told him to come in, and presently he entered, and I am bound
to say that if it had not been that just then I had not got a
laugh anywhere about me, I should have exploded at the sight
he presented armed for battle. To begin with, he had on a clergyman's
black swallow-tail and a kind of broad-rimmed black felt hat,
both of which he had donned on account, he said, of their dark
colour. In his hand was the Winchester repeating rifle we had
lent him; and stuck in an elastic cricketing belt, like those
worn by English boys, were, first, a huge buckhorn-handled carving
knife with a guard to it, and next a long-barrelled Colt's revolver.
'Ah, my friend,' he said, seeing me staring at his belt, 'you
are looking at my "carver". I thought it might come in handy
if we came to close quarters; it is excellent steel, and many
is the pig I have killed with it.'
By this time everybody was up and dressing. I put on a light
Norfolk jacket over my mail shirt in order to have a pocket handy
to hold my cartridges, and buckled on my revolver. Good did
the same, but Sir Henry put on nothing except his mail shirt,
steel-lined cap, and a pair of 'veldt-schoons' or soft hide shoes,
his legs being bare from the knees down.
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