They were waiting so, one night, when the next water-front blaze came
to relieve the monotony of their inaction. At the first stroke of
the jigger Keighley laid down his pen and brightened with the hope
that there was a fire in his district to release him from his desk.
Lieutenant Moore dropped his newspaper and looked up to count the
strokes of the bell with an expression of relief. The men straightened
back from their dominoes; and when the little bell started to ring
the third number of a station in their district, they rose with a
smile. With the first stroke of the larger gong, the sitting-room was
empty--Captain Keighley was shouting to the pilot, “All right there!
Pier ----, North River!”--and the _Hudson_ was under way.
They found the river as crowded with a summer evening’s traffic as
Broadway with street-cars and hansoms on a theatre night; and the
_Hudson_ had no shore engine’s right of way under the law. She went
whistling up the stream, dodging and spurting, throbbing, grunting and
checking speed. Blazing excursion boats, bedecked with colored lights,
answered her impatient signals with cheerful impudence and held their
courses. Squat ferries paddled serenely across her path. A tug cut in
ahead of her to race with her for salvage, and worried her like a cur
at a horse’s head. The pilot twirled his wheel, worked his engine room
signals, and swore despairingly. And Captain Keighley, staring at the
shore lights in the distance, revolved the first sentence of his report
in memory, and vainly tried to forget it.
When the river opened into a free stretch of water, the tug fell
behind; and Keighley saw the pier-end lamp--towards which they were
heading--blinking like the intermittent flash of a lighthouse. It
disappeared, and he guessed that it had been blotted out by the drift
of smoke.
“Wind from the south?” he asked. The pilot answered, “Yes’r.” Keighley
said, “Take us in on this side o’ the pier.”
He stepped out of the wheelhouse to go aft to the crew. “Get out two
two-inch lines from the port gates,” he ordered Lieutenant Moore.
“Shine” came running back from the bows and joined the men who were
taking the hose from its metal-sheathed box. “Banana fritters fer
ours,” he said. “It’s the fruit pier!” And Keighley observed that
some of the men laughed, that the others at least smiled, and that
Lieutenant Moore was the only one who remained out of reach of the
invitation to good humor. The captain returned forward again, frowning
thoughtfully.
The pier shed, as they swung in towards it, was fuming at every door
with puffs of a heavy smoke from the burning grasses in which the
fruit was packed; and Keighley saw that the fire was going to be--in
department slang--a “worker.” He could see the “steamers” of two shore
companies drawing water from the end of the slip. He understood that
their crews were in the shed, trying to drive the fire forward; and he
knew that it would be his duty to enter from the other end of the pier
and catch the flames between the two attacks.
He shouted to the pilot, “Hol’ us up to the door there!” He ran back to
Lieutenant Moore. “Stay aboard here,” he ordered. “If the blaze shows
in the roof, take the top off her with the monitor. Go slow, though.
Don’t bring it down onto us.” He called to the men, “Throw out yer
lines! Make fast, now! Hang on to that line aft! Hol’ it! Hol’ it....
All right. Stretch in. In through the door here! Come on!”
He jumped up on the bulwarks as the engines reversed with a frantic
churning astern. And then he saw a flicker of flame glimmer and grow
between the timbers of the cribwork, just above the water line, half
way up the dock.
“Hol’ on!” he cried to the four men who had leaped to the pier. “Drop
one o’ those lines. Take yer axes. Chop a hole in the floor planks
inside. The fire’s ’n underneath.”
The men who were aboard the _Hudson_ tossed the axes out to the others,
and these rushed into the smoke, dragging the single line of hose.
Keighley said to the Lieutenant, “Go in an’ take charge there. See ’at
no one gets lost in that smoke.” Moore scrambled to the pier, and the
captain ran forward along the bulwarks, peering down for an opening
between the stringers of the cribbing.
He knew that the crew on the pier would take at least ten minutes to
cut a hole through the three-inch planks, in the blind suffocation of
that shed; and meanwhile, the fire would travel from end to end of the
pier. He could see no opening larger than an inch slit between the foot
timbers beside the bow of the boat. He started aft again.
“Shine,” behind him, said, “It’s covered at high water, cap.”
Keighley spun around. “What is?”
“The hole. I t’ought--”
Keighley jumped down at him. “Where is it? Will it take a line o’ hose
in?”
“Sure,” “Shine” said. “It’ll take a bunch o’ bananas in.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s--it’s about there.” He pointed down the pier. “It’s ’n under
water at high tide.”
Keighley ran his fingers up the buttons of his rubber coat, and it fell
off him like sleight-of-hand. His helmet dropped beside it. “Get me a
heavin’-line,” he said. And “Shine” gasped excitedly, “Say, cap, _you_
can’t find it. Yuh have to dive. It’s where the ‘club’ ust to hide the
stuff we swiped--till the cop got next t’ it. I c’u’d make it in the
dark. We fixed up a reg’lar joint in there.”
The captain said, “Peel off, then. Hi, there! Bring us a
heavin’-line”--and ran back to get it.
“Shine” dropped to the deck with a chuckle and began a race for “first
in,” gurgling an excited profanity as he kicked off his rubber boots.
Diving on the water-front, on a midsummer night, was a way of earning a
living that appealed to him.
“Beat y’ in, Turk,” he challenged. “Come on. Saturday’s wash-day.”
“Turk” asked cautiously, “What’s on?” He had an instinctive distrust of
“Shine” as a type, as well as an acquired distrust of him as a “Jigger.”
“Nuthin’ ’s on,” “Shine” said as he came out of his blue flannel shirt
and stood up, grinning, naked. “Where’s the rope?”
Farley, from behind, tied one line under his arms. Captain Keighley
gave him the end of another. “That’s fer signalin’,” he explained.
“Jerk it three times if yuh want us to haul y’ out. Jerk it twice if
yuh’re all right an’ ready to take in the house. We’ll tie this other
one to the pipe. Jerk once to start the water. Over yuh go now!...
Strip!” he said to Cripps.
“Shine” sprang upon the bulwarks, took the signaling-line between his
teeth, and dived. He struck the water and went in as clean as a fish. A
few bubbles rose and burst in the streak of light from the wheelhouse
window. The lines paid out smoothly through Keighley’s hand.
They stopped--and he began to gather in the slack, stealthily. They
jerked forward, and ran out with a rush. There was the pause of a
crisis. Then the signal-line jumped twice, and Keighley cried, “He’s
in! Give him the pipe! Light up there!” Cripps tossed the nozzle
overboard, and the others ran aft to lighten up the hose.