Who could tell?
Not I, either then or afterwards, for I never found out.
As for the Pongo themselves, their case was obvious.

They were a dying tribe, the last descendants of some higher race, grown barren from intermarriage.

Probably, too, they were at first only cannibals occasionally and from religious reasons.

Then in some time of dearth they became very religious in that respect, and the habit overpowered them.

Among cannibals, at any rate in Africa, as I knew, this dreadful food is much preferred to any other meat.