Our destructive weapons are far superior to any you
possess or have described. That levelled at you by my neighbour would
have sent to ten times your distance a small ball, which, bursting,
would have asphyxiated every living thing for several yards around.
But our laws regarding the use of such weapons are very stringent, and
your enemy dared not imperil the lives of those you held. Those laws
would not, he evidently thought, apply to yourself, who, as he would
have affirmed, could not be regarded as a man and an object of legal
protection."
He explained the motives and conduct of his countrymen with such
perfect coolness, such absence of surprise or indignation, that I felt
slightly nettled, and answered sarcastically, "If the slaughter of
strangers whose account of themselves appears improbable be so
completely a matter of course among you, I am at a loss to understand
your own interference, and the treatment I have received from yourself
and your family, so utterly opposite in spirit as well as in form to
that I met from everybody else."
"I do not," he answered, "always act from the motives in vogue among
my fellow-creatures of this planet; but why and how I differ from them
it might not be well to explain.
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