You heard Umbezi say to-day that he will not give me his daughter, Mameena, unless I give him a hundred head of cows.

Now, I have not got the cattle, and I cannot earn them by work in many years.

Therefore I must take them from a certain tribe I know which is at war with the Zulus.

But this I cannot do unless I have a gun.

If I had a good gun, Inkoosi--one that only goes off when it is asked, and not of its own fancy, I who have some name could persuade a number of men whom I know, who once were servants of my father, or their sons, to be my companions in this venture." "Do I understand that you wish me to give you one of my good guns with two mouths to it (i.e.double-barrelled), a gun worth at least twelve oxen, for nothing, O Saduko ?" I asked in a cold and scandalised voice.
"Not so, O Watcher-by-Night," he answered; "not so, O He-who-sleeps-with-one-eye-open" (another free and difficult rendering of my native name, Macumazahn, or more correctly, Macumazana)--"I should never dream of offering such an insult to your high-born intelligence." He paused and took another pinch of snuff, then went on in a meditative voice: "Where I propose to get those hundred cattle there are many more; I am told not less than a thousand head in all.