"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?" "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-- "Twice you have saved my life and my people, Kenni. I am your man. You must not go away. For the thought of my little son who is dead I will give up eating man. I will become a nation." "And you will answer for the rest?" "I will answer for the rest. If any man eats man I will kill him." Ha'o kept his word, and so, in the death of his little son, the foundations were laid in Kapaa'a, and the black cloud broke once more in blessing. CHAPTER XXIV GAIN OF LOSS With a clean bill of health, and Ha'o as supreme chief anxious to become a nation, and therefore ready to follow the white men's ideas, matters began to progress rapidly. The first thing to be done, as soon as the men could be spared from hospital work, was to get rid of the Blackbirders. Captain Cathie, vehemently backed up by Aunt Jannet, would even now have made short work of them. "Give 'em a fair trial and string 'em up," was his simple idea of the justice that would meet the case. And "Hear, hear!" said Aunt Jannet with energy.