CURT. In my better moments I have believed that just this was the meaning—that we should not be able to catch a meaning, and yet submit——
CAPTAIN. Submit? Without a fixed point outside myself I cannot submit.
CURT. Quite right, but as a mathematician you should be able to seek that unknown point when several known ones are given——
CAPTAIN. I have sought it, and—I have not found it!
CURT. Then you have made some mistake in your calculations—do it all over again!
CAPTAIN. I should do it over again? Tell me, where did you get your resignation?
CURT. I have none left. Don't overestimate me.
CAPTAIN. As you may have noticed, my understanding of the art of living has been—elimination! That means: wipe out and pass on! Very early in life I made myself a bag into which I chucked my humiliations, and when it was full I dropped it into the sea. I don't think any man ever suffered so many humiliations as I have. But when I wiped them out and passed on they ceased to exist.
CURT. I have noticed that you have wrought both your life and your environment out of your poetical imagination.
CAPTAIN. How could I have lived otherwise? How could I have endured? [Puts his hand over his heart.