"That is the way I pronounced it; is it not correct?"
"I don't know. I never heard of him before, but the name seems not unfamiliar. Is he living?"
"Oh, no; dead centuries since. Were you hoping to find one of your old personal friends?"
"Don't laugh, Captain. Somehow the name seems to carry me back somewhere."
"Maybe you knew him in a previous existence."
"Don't laugh, Captain. It is not the words, but merely the name that strikes me. You don't believe the words yourself."
"I do and I do not. I believe them in a sense."
"In what sense, Captain?"
"In the sense in which the poet taught. The religion of the East is fatalism. A fatalist who endeavours to shun death is inconsistent."
"But you are not a fatalist."