Page:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Huebsch 1916).djvu/203

 instant; then the music seemed to recede, to recede, to recede: and from each receding trail of nebulous music there fell always one long-drawn calling note, piercing like a star the dusk of silence. Again! Again! Again! A voice from beyond the world was calling.

—Hello, Stephanos!—

—Here comes The Dedalus!—

—Ao!... Eh, give it over, Dwyer, I'm telling you, or I'll give you a stuff in the kisser for yourself... Ao!—

—Good man, Towser! Duck him!—

—Come along, Dedalus! Bous Stephanoumenos! Bous Stephaneforos!—

—Duck him! Guzzle him now, Towser!—

—Help! Help!... Ao!—

He recognized their speech collectively before he distinguished their faces. The mere sight of that medley of wet nakedness chilled him to the bone. Their bodies, corpsewhite or suffused with a pallid golden light or rawly tanned by the suns, gleamed with the wet of the sea. Their divingstone, poised on its rude supports and rocking under their plunges, and the rough-hewn stones of the sloping breakwater over which they scrambled in their horseplay, gleamed with cold wet lustre. The towels with which they smacked their bodies were heavy with cold seawater: and drenched with cold brine was their matted hair.

He stood still in deference to their calls and parried their banter with easy words. How characterless they looked: Shuley without his deep unbuttoned collar, Ennis without his scarlet belt with the snaky clasp, and Connolly without his Norfolk coat with the flapless sidepockets! It was a pain to see them and a sword-like [195]