Mr. Bruce, however, was sensible that the cause of his quarrel with Guebra Mascal was not immediately forgotten at court. The king, one day, asked him whether he was not drunk himself, as well as his opponent, when that quarrel arose. Mr. Bruce replied that he was perfectly sober; for their entertainer’s red wine was finished, and he never willingly drank hydromel. His Majesty, with a degree of keenness, returned: “Did you then soberly say to Guebra Mascal, that an end of a tallow-candle in a gun in your hand would do more execution than an iron bullet in his?” “Certainly, sir, I said so.” “And why?” “Because it was truth.” “With a tallow-candle you can kill a man or a horse?” “Pardon me, sir; your Majesty is now in place of my sovereign; it would be great presumption in me to argue with you, or urge a conversation against an opinion in which you are already fixed.” The king’s kindness and curiosity, and Mr. Bruce’s desire to vindicate himself, carried matters at length so far, that an experiment with a tallow-candle was proposed. Three courtiers brought each a shield; Mr. Bruce charged his gun with a piece of tallow-candle, and pierced through three at once, to the astonishment, and even the confusion, of the Abyssinian monarch and his courtiers. A sycamore table was next aimed at, and as easily perforated as the shields. These feats the simple Abyssinians attributed to the power of magic; but they made a strong impression on the mind of the monarch in favour of our traveller. Before we quit the subject of Savage Warfare, it may not be out of place to say a word or two concerning the manufacture of savage war tools. Turning back these pages we may find that, as a man of battle, our brother the barbarian, despite his profound ignorance, is by no means a bungling craftsman. His business is to knock his enemy on the head--to knock his life out, in fact; and this operation may be performed as neatly with the iron-wood _meré_ of the New Zealander, or the _waddi_ of the Australian Aborigine, as by a leaden pellet from the mouth of the modern Minié or Whitworth--at least if not as neatly, quite as effectively. The savage has no notion of refinement in killing; give him a revolver, perfected with the very latest improvements, and explain to him how that it will send a man to death with as fine a hole in his carcass that the grim extinguisher of life himself shall be almost puzzled to discover his title to the slain one, and he--the savage--will reject it; it is a “witch thing,” and he would rather let such alone. At the same time, if you will make him the present, untrammelled by conditions, he will accept it; as by thrusting a tough stick up one of the barrels the revolver may be converted into a handy club, with which a man may kill his enemy in such a way that half a glance will show the manner of his death.