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'.
I took up the axe and closely examined this formidable weapon.
It was, as I have said, of the nature of a pole-axe.