"O Macumazana" (that is my native name, often abbreviated into
Macumazahn, which means "One who stands out," or as many interpret it, I
don't know how, "Watcher-by-Night")--"a gun that goes off sometimes when
you do not expect it is much better than no gun at all, and you are a
chief with a great heart to promise it to me, for when I own the White
Man's weapon I shall be looked up to and feared by everyone between the
two rivers."
Now, while he was speaking he handled the gun, that was loaded,
observing which I moved behind him. Off it went in due course, its
recoil knocking him backwards--for that gun was a devil to kick--and its
bullet cutting the top off the ear of one of his wives. The lady fled
screaming, leaving a little bit of her ear upon the ground.
"What does it matter?" said Umbezi, as he picked himself up, rubbing his
shoulder with a rueful look. "Would that the evil spirit in the gun had
cut off her tongue and not her ear! It is the Worn-out-Old-Cow's own
fault; she is always peeping into everything like a monkey. Now she will
have something to chatter about and leave my things alone for awhile. I
thank my ancestral Spirit it was not Mameena, for then her looks would
have been spoiled."
"Who is Mameena?" I asked. "Your last wife?"
"No, no, Macumazahn; I wish she were, for then I should have the most
beautiful wife in the land. She is my daughter, though not that of the
Worn-out-Old-Cow; her mother died when she was born, on the night of the
Great Storm. You should ask Saduko there who Mameena is," he added with
a broad grin, lifting his head from the gun, which he was examining
gingerly, as though he thought it might go off again while unloaded, and
nodding towards someone who stood behind him.
I turned, and for the first time saw Saduko, whom I recognised at once
as a person quite out of the ordinary run of natives.
He was a tall and magnificently formed young man, who, although his
breast was scarred with assegai wounds, showing that he was a warrior,
had not yet attained to the honour of the "ring" of polished wax laid
over strips of rush bound round with sinew and sewn to the hair, the
"isicoco" which at a certain age or dignity, determined by the king,
Zulus are allowed to assume. But his face struck me more even than his
grace, strength and stature. Undoubtedly it was a very fine face, with
little or nothing of the negroid type about it; indeed, he might have
been a rather dark-coloured Arab, to which stock he probably threw back.
The eyes, too, were large and rather melancholy, and in his reserved,
dignified air there was something that showed him to be no common
fellow, but one of breeding and intellect.