"Wot color are they?" asked Coke. De Sylva's reply was given in a tone of surprise. Certainly these hardy mariners had selected an unusual topic for discussion at a critical moment.
"The common dark gray," he said.
"That's all right, then," sneered Coke. "Watts don't mind 'em gray. They're old messmates of his. 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. He may have scanned the meager forces at his disposal and felt that he was asking the gods for more than they could grant. A few minutes earlier he had put forth the suave suggestion that Hozier should be given the speediest chance of securing the girl's safety. That was politic; perhaps his stanch nerve was yielding to the strain, now that the two islanders were gone on their doubtful quest. Be that as it may, his attitude did not encourage light conversation. Even Coke withheld some jibe at the unfortunate mate's expense. A chill silence fell on the little group. The more imaginative among them were calculating the exact kind of lurch taken by the unstable raft that would mean "drowning without a cry."
Thus the minutes sped, until a dim shape emerged from the opposite blackness. It came unheard, growing from nothing into something with ghostly subtlety. Iris, a prey to many emotions, managed to stifle the exclamation of alarm that rose unbidden. But Hozier read her distress in a hardly audible sob.
"It is our friend, Marcel," he whispered. "So Domingo has made good his landing. Be brave! The sea is quite calm. This man has been to the island and back in less than a quarter of an hour."
His confidence gave her new courage. She even tried to turn danger itself into a jest.