"No, never," said Blair, with an expression of disgust.
"Then you cannot know how good he is. My people think there is nothing equal to man—except woman or child, which are better still. But I will promise you never to eat yellow man again, Kenni."
"That is not enough. Unless you will give up eating man of any kind we must go. We have provided other food. You cannot go hungry. The pigs and the goats are all over the island. The paw-paws grow while you sleep. You have taro and bananas, and breadfruit and coco-nuts. You have the chance to become a nation, strong and powerful. You are sole chief on Kapaa'a now. I would have you chief of the other islands also. But if you prefer to eat man I can do nothing for you. It is the foundation of all the rest that you give up eating man."
"My little son did not eat of the yellow men, Kenni, but your God took him. Why?"
"It was the disease took him. It is the most terrible thing for passing from one to another. Could you stand the thought of your little son being eaten, Ha'o?"
"My son? No! I would have died sooner than let him be eaten."
"Yet you say other men's babies are good to eat."
Ha'o looked at him, and then lay looking out over the lagoon.
"See, Ha'o," said Blair at last, "if the thought of your little son will turn you from flesh-eating, he will have done more for Kapaa'a in the short time he lived than you have done in all your life, and we shall remember Ha'o's little son always as the beginning of the better times."
The brown man lay thinking a long time and one may not know his thoughts. But at last he said quietly—