"Very many."
"Then why do they not kill all the black-fellows?" asked Jack.
Smith explained to him that the white men had done so as far as they could, until the law stopped them.
"The law!" said Big Jack. "My father's father used to speak of the law. But I never understood it. Tell me what it is."
And Smith toiled hard to explain that enigma. But he had to come to concrete examples.
"The law is a custom which says one man must not kill another except in war. And if he does he is killed, too."
"Who kills him?" asked Big Jack.
"The people who have the power," said Smith, who was rapidly becoming confused.
"Then it is not wrong to kill if you can?" asked Jack.
"Yes it is, unless you are in the right," said poor Smith.