an income which your father earned. You are like a frigate bird
swooping down upon the boobies and robbing them of the fish they
have caught. You are one with a crowd of men who have made what
they call a government, who are masters of all the other men, and
who eat the food the other men get and would like to eat
themselves. You wear the warm clothes. They made the clothes, but
they shiver in rags and ask you, the lawyer, or business agent who
handles your money, for a job."

"But that is beside the matter," I cried.

"Not at all." He was speaking rapidly now, and his eyes were
flashing. "It is piggishness, and it is life. Of what use or
sense is an immortality of piggishness? What is the end? What is
it all about? You have made no food. Yet the food you have eaten
or wasted might have saved the lives of a score of wretches who
made the food but did not eat it. What immortal end did you serve?
or did they? Consider yourself and me. What does your boasted
immortality amount to when your life runs foul of mine? You would
like to go back to the land, which is a favourable place for your
kind of piggishness. It is a whim of mine to keep you aboard this
ship, where my piggishness flourishes. And keep you I will. I may
make or break you. You may die to-day, this week, or next month.
I could kill you now, with a blow of my fist, for you are a
miserable weakling. But if we are immortal, what is the reason for
this? To be piggish as you and I have been all our lives does not
seem to be just the thing for immortals to be doing. Again, what's
it all about? Why have I kept you here?--"

"Because you are stronger," I managed to blurt out.