“Yes?” Joshua York said quietly, respectfully. That might have decided it right there, Marsh thought later-the respect in his voice.

“That’s the Eclipse, ”Marsh said. “See, her name is on the wheelhouse, there.” He jabbed with his stick. “Can you read it?”

“Quite well. I have excellent night vision. This is a special boat, then?”

“Hell yes, she’s special. She’s the Eclipse. Every goddamned man and boy on this river knows her. Old now-she was built back in ’52, five years ago. But she’s still grand. Cost $375,000, so they say, and worth all of it. There ain’t never been a bigger, fancier, more formid-a-bul boat than this one right here. I’ve studied her, taken passage on her. I know.” Marsh pointed. “She measures 365 feet by 40, and her grand saloon is 330 feet long, and you never seen nothin’ like it. Got a gold statue of Henry Clay at one end, and Andy Jackson at the other, the two of ’em glaring at each other the whole damn way. More crystal and silver and colored glass than the Planters’ House ever dreamed of, oil paintings, food like you ain’t never tasted, and mirrors- such mirrors. And all that’s nothin’ to her speed.

“Down below on the main deck she carries 15 boilers. Got an 11-foot stroke, I tell you, and there ain’t a boat on any river can run with her when Cap’n Sturgeon gets up her steam. She’s done eighteen miles an hour upstream, easy. Back in ’53, she set the record from New Orleans to Louisville. I know her time by heart. Four days, nine hours, thirty minutes, and she beat the goddamned A. L. Shotwell by fifty minutes, fast as the Shotwell is.” Marsh rounded to face York. “I hoped my Lady Liz would take the Eclipse some day, beat her time or race her head to head, but she never could of done it, I know that now. I was just foolin’ myself. I didn’t have the money it takes to build a boat that can take the Eclipse.