CAPTAIN. Whiskey? No, I don't want to die—You! [Straightening himself up] Don't touch me! Ten minutes, or the garrison will be massacred. [Pulls the sabre partly from the scabbard] Ten minutes!
[Goes out through the background.
CURT. What kind of man is this?
ALICE. He is a demon, and no man!
CURT. What does he want with my son?
ALICE. He wants him as hostage in order to be your master—he wants to isolate you from the authorities of the island—Do you know that the people around here have named this island "Little Hell"?
CURT. I didn't know that—Alice, you are the first woman who ever inspired me with compassion—all others have seemed to me to deserve their fate.
ALICE. Don't desert me now! Don't leave me, for he will beat me—he has been doing so all these twenty-five years—in the presence of the children—and he has pushed me into the water——
CURT. Having heard this, I place myself absolutely against him. I came here without an angry thought, without memory of his former slanders and attempts to humiliate me. I forgave him even when you told me that he was the man who had parted me from my children—for he was ill and dying—but now, when he wants to steal my son, he must die—he or I!
ALICE. Good! No surrender of the fortress! But blow it up instead, with him in it, even if we have to keep him company! I am in charge of the powder!