Four pairs of eyes were peering
through the mist, the damnable, yellow mist that veiled all things.
"Curse the fog!" said Stringer; "it's just our damn luck!"
"Cutter 'hoy!" bawled a man at his side suddenly, one of the river
police more used to the mists of the Thames. "Cutter on the port bow,
sir!"
"Keep her in sight," shouted Rogers from the stern; "don't lose her for
your lives!"
Stringer, at imminent peril of precipitating himself into the water, was
craning out over the bows and staring until his eyes smarted.
"Don't you see her?" said one of the men on the lookout. "She carries no
lights, of course, but you can just make out the streak of her wake."
Harder, harder stared Stringer, and now a faint, lighter smudge in the
blackness, ahead and below, proclaimed itself the wake of some rapidly
traveling craft.
"I can hear her motor!" said another voice.
Stringer began, now, also to listen.
Muffled sirens were hooting dismally all about Limehouse Reach, and he
knew that this random dash through the night was fraught with extreme
danger, since this was a narrow and congested part of the great highway.
But, listen as he might, he could not detect the sounds referred to.
The brazen roar of a big steamer's siren rose up before them.
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