"Well, what is it, then?" they asked him "What is her name?"
"Can't you rade?" asked Mike.
"Yes. But what is her name?"
"It's the S dropped off," Charlie repeated.
Mike shook his shoulders and that baffled look was on his forehead as he turned from them.
"Oh, indade," he said. "Nobody knows anything about it; and everybody's talking. You think you know all about it; maybe I think I know a hell of a lot; but we all know damn-all. If you want to know, keep your mouth shut till we get ashore. They'll be paid off along of us likely, and you'll hear what the man at the Board of Trade Office calls them. She's another ould ship the same as us, and that's enough to be goin' on with."
"Well, we're forgin a'ead, any'ow," said Cockney.
Suddenly their feet tingled and the sound of the siren came. They looked round and up. The haze had not thickened again-it was not for that she whistled.
"She's whistling for the cattle-sheds," somebody said. One of the others explained that in a race like this the steamer that passed a certain point first was the first to be unloaded, and the Glory was whistling to let them know ashore that she had done it. Some of the youngsters asked the older men if this was so, but they shook their heads; they did not know. They had often made the trip, but rules change. "Wait and see," was all that anybody could say.
A radiance began to come down into the haze, and the particles of moisture sparkled. A glory, a splendour, but ever so tenuous, ever so frail, was on the river-mist, a mist that waned fainter and fainter. The men lay along the rail and looked into the mist as though they sought to make sure of that evanescent radiance in it, to make sure that it was there, was not a trick of their eyes. The other steamer had now the air of giving up, fell behind, foot by foot, content to be second. One of the young men plucked Mike's elbow; he had been in a knot looking the other way.