It's w'en they're pink or green that he fights shy of 'em." "I hate rats of any sort----" began Watts hotly, spurred to anger by an audible snigger among the men, but De Sylva stopped his protest peremptorily.

It was idiotic, this bantering when the next half hour might be their last.
"You must learn to guard your tongue," he said with harsh distinctness.
"We cannot have our plans marred by a fool's outcry." Nevertheless, the chief officer of the _Andromeda_ was far from being a fool.

He had cut an inglorious figure during the wreck, but he was sober enough now, and it hurt his pride to be jeered at by his own skipper and treated with contumely by one whom he privately classed as a Dago.

He had the good sense to realize that the present was no fit time for a display of temper; but he nursed his wrath.

Dom Corria would have been well advised had he followed the counsel given so ungraciously, and guarded his own tongue.
It might well be that the ex-President, whose fortunes were on the tiptoe of desperate hazard, was beginning to despair.