"Perhaps it was to teach you and your people. See, Ha'o! We want you to take your right place in the world. It was for that we came. It was for that we beat off the yellow men who would have carried you away. We are ready to give our lives to help you. But we must have the foundations firm or we cannot build. You do not build a house on running sand, nor a platform on cracking poles."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Promise me, here and now, that you will never eat man again, and that you will make it tabu to your people. They will do what you say. They are frightened. God never meant man to be eaten."
"How do you know, Kenni?"
"He forbade man even to kill man, but of the beasts He has provided He said, 'Kill and eat.'"
"You killed the yellow men," he said again.
"To save you from them."
"Then you did wrong too. Why did the crawling death not touch you?"
"It is not right to kill men, yet if a man attacks you, and in defending yourself he gets killed, the blame is his, not yours."
"You never tasted man, Kenni, did you?"