reverie as he does so. He looks straight
into the eyes of an imaginary woman; seizes her by the arms; and says
in a deep and thrilling tone, "Do you love me!" The captain comes out
of the pantry at this moment; and Hector, caught with his arms stretched
out and his fists clenched, has to account for his attitude by going
through a series of gymnastic exercises.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. That sort of strength is no good. You will never be as
strong as a gorilla.

HECTOR. What is the dynamite for?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. To kill fellows like Mangan.

HECTOR. No use. They will always be able to buy more dynamite than you.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I will make a dynamite that he cannot explode.

HECTOR. And that you can, eh?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Yes: when I have attained the seventh degree of
concentration.

HECTOR. What's the use of that? You never do attain it.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What then is to be done? Are we to be kept forever in
the mud by these hogs to whom the universe is nothing but a machine for
greasing their bristles and filling their snouts?

HECTOR. Are Mangan's bristles worse than Randall's lovelocks?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER,. We must win powers of life and death over them both.
I refuse to die until I have invented the means.

HECTOR. Who are we that we should judge them?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What are they that they should judge us? Yet they do,
unhesitatingly. There is enmity between our seed and their seed. They
know it and act on it, strangling our souls. They believe in themselves.
When we believe in ourselves, we shall kill them.

HECTOR. It is the same seed. You forget that your pirate has a very nice
daughter. Mangan's son may be a Plato: Randall's a Shelley. What was my
father?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The damnedst scoundrel I ever met. [He replaces the
drawing-board; sits down at the table; and begins to mix a wash of
color].

HECTOR. Precisely. Well, dare you kill his innocent grandchildren?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. They are mine also.

HECTOR. Just so--we are members one of another. [He throws himself
carelessly on the sofa]. I tell you I have often thought of this killing
of human vermin. Many men have thought of it. Decent men are like Daniel
in the lion's den: their survival is a miracle; and they do not always
survive. We live among the Mangans and Randalls and Billie Dunns as
they, poor devils, live among the disease germs and the doctors and the
lawyers and the parsons and the restaurant chefs and the tradesme