I restrained him, and declared coldly that the cowardice of these four men did not seem to me a matter of such great importance.
"And you call yourself a seaman, I suppose," he pronounced angrily.

I said that's what I called myself, and I hoped I was too.

He heard me out, and made a gesture with his big arm that seemed to deprive me of my individuality, to push me away into the crowd.

"The worst of it," he said, "is that all you fellows have no sense of dignity; you don't think enough of what you are supposed to be." 'We had been walking slowly meantime, and now stopped opposite the harbour office, in sight of the very spot from which the immense captain of the Patna had vanished as utterly as a tiny feather blown away in a hurricane.

I smiled.