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 tradesmen and the
servants and all the rest of the parasites and blackmailers. What
are our terrors to theirs? Give me the power to kill them; and
I'll spare them in sheer--
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [cutting in sharply]. Fellow feeling?
HECTOR. No. I should kill myself if I believed that. I must
believe that my spark, small as it is, is divine, and that the
red light over their door is hell fire. I should spare them in
simple magnanimous pity.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You can't spare them until you have the power
to kill them. At present they have the power to kill you. There
are millions of blacks over the water for them to train and let
loose on us. They're going to do it. They're doing it already.
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