MRS HUSHABYE. Five hundred pounds; and I have made it last since Easter!
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Since Easter! Barely four months! Monstrous extravagance! I could live for seven years on 500 pounds.
MRS HUSHABYE. Not keeping open house as we do here, daddiest.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Only 500 pounds for that lifeboat! I got twelve thousand for the invention before that.
MRS HUSHABYE. Yes, dear; but that was for the ship with the magnetic keel that sucked up submarines. Living at the rate we do, you cannot afford life-saving inventions. Can't you think of something that will murder half Europe at one bang?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. I am ageing fast. My mind does not dwell on slaughter as it did when I was a boy. Why doesn't your husband invent something? He does nothing but tell lies to women.
HECTOR. Well, that is a form of invention, is it not? However, you are right: I ought to support my wife.
MRS HUSHABYE. Indeed you shall do nothing of the sort: I should never see you from breakfast to dinner. I want my husband.
HECTOR [bitterly]. I might as well be your lapdog.
MRS HUSHABYE. Do you want to be my breadwinner, like the other poor husbands?
HECTOR. No, by thunder! What a damned creature a husband is anyhow!
MRS HUSHABYE [to the captain]. What about that harpoon cannon?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No use. It kills whales, not men.
MRS HUSHABYE. Why not? You fire the harpoon out of a cannon. It sticks in the enemy's general; you wind him in; and there you are.
HECTOR. You are your father's daughter, Hesione.
