IX

In the morning it was announced in the newspapers that Chief Borden

had been suspended, pending the decision of the courts on the charges

against him, and that Moran had been appointed acting-chief in his

place. Keighley opened his eyes wide upon the news, and then narrowed

them cunningly as he considered it. He had expected that Borden would

be thrown out neck and crop as a warning to all the “Anti-Jiggers;” and

there was a glimmer of something hopeful in the half-heartedness of a

tentative suspension. Keighley shut himself in his office with his desk

telephone to find out what had happened.

It did not take him long to learn. One of his political friends in the

upper circle explained that “the Boss” had objected to a fratricidal

war that threatened to disrupt the whole fire department, to sacrifice

public faith in the administration for no political ends, and to weaken

the “organization” by dividing it against itself. The Fire Commissioner

had compromised by suspending Borden instead of “breaking” him.

Keighley listened--and shook his head. “That don’t let _me_ out,” he

said. “It may keep ’em from comin’ after me on Broadway with a club,

but it’ll never keep ’em from stickin’ me in the back some night around

a dark corner.”

He hung up the receiver and scratched the back of his neck doubtfully.

It was his day off duty, but he was reluctant to take it--and leave

the lieutenant in charge. “Moore,” he summoned him, “get that report

done, will yuh? I’ll see to cleanin’ the boat.”

“It’s all right,” Moore replied. “I can do both--if you want to get

away.”

Keighley looked out the window at the humid haze of heat that hung over

the water. “I guess I’ll be as cool here as anywhere,” he said. “Go

ahead with the report.”

* * * * *

That Sunday was to be memorable in the records of the Weather Bureau

as the hottest July day in forty years; and it was to be memorable in

the records of the fire department for the most dangerous fire that

had attacked the water front since the department had been formed.

But the fire did not break out till sundown; and fate, while she was

setting a terrific stage for Keighley’s next appearance, allowed him

one of those entre-acts that make the fireman’s life such a thing of

heart-breaking spurts of action and nerve-wracking blanks of peace.

Having given his orders for the day, he withdrew, upstairs, to a

balcony off his bunkroom, where he sat all morning in the shade,

watching the tugs and ferries, steamboats, floats and scows that

bustled and wallowed and staggered past, squealing in a shrill

impatience when they whistled, and puffing short of breath when they

reversed. The water under their bows broke and fell back sluggishly.

The swells in their wakes reeled away with an oily roll. The air was

heavy with the drifting belch of their funnels.

It could not be said that Keighley really thought of anything while

he sat there. It was one of the characteristics of his mind that it

worked best under the conditions of bewildering excitement that make

clear thought impossible to most men. He did not even think about

the “Jiggers;” he merely snoozed, with one eye on that matter, like

a watchdog, until the noonday sun drove him from his balcony. Then

he went sleepily to a neighboring restaurant for his dinner, having

already telephoned that he would not be home.

It was a blistering afternoon, with a sun overhead that struck a

quivering refraction from the dried and warped planks of the wharves,

and a breeze that came hot across the sparkle of the bay where the

glancing facets of small waves shone like a million gleaming little

mirrors. The pierhouse stood at the water’s edge, as bare as a

lighthouse to the beat and reflection of the heat, its row of open

windows gaping in the sunlight like a line of gasping mouths. The men

idled interminably, reading the papers, yawning for an interval and

then reading them all over again. And Keighley dozed at his desk in his

office--like Napoleon before a battle!--waiting for the attack of his

enemy to develop the plan of his counter-assault.

A stiff easterly breeze sprang up at sunset. It came cool from the sea;

and the crew of the _Hudson_ received it as a grateful relief. But

this same breeze--puffing steadily into the smolder of a small fire

that had just broken out in the lumber yard of a furniture factory on

the East River water front--blew the flames back through the stacks

of seasoned boards like a blaze through kindlings; and while the

_Hudson_, in answer to a delayed alarm, was rounding the Battery and

speeding up the river, the flames spread eagerly, in spite of all the

efforts of the shore companies to check them, till, by the time the

_Hudson_ arrived, they covered as much ground as a prairie fire. Under

a volume of dense smoke, they reached and writhed and leaped together,

darting up their heads venomously, waving aloft their flickering

crests, coiling back and striking low. When the wind lifted the pall

that covered their trail, the piles of lumber could be seen burning

like torches. In front of them, every now and then, a feathery stream

rose white in the ruddy glow, spitting impotently into the air as the

firemen, retreating, choked it and dragged it back; and overhead,

continually, the triumphal sparks brightened and soared.

At the first sight of them Keighley’s indolence of mind disappeared

with the quick blink of an alert eye. “Aha!” he said to himself.

“There’s work for Moran.” He shouted to the men, “Get out ev’ry line we

got, boys.”

He laid the _Hudson_ broadside on, at the head of the slip, between two

wharves, under the dark wall of the furniture factory; and he led up

three lines of his largest hose to take the fire in the rear. He left

the boat empty except for the pilot, standing black in the door of the

lighted wheelhouse, and quiet except when Dady, the engineer, came up

from the engine room, looked across the darkness towards the struggle

which he could not see, and called out to the pilot, “How’s she goin’,

Pete?”

The pilot answered several times, indifferently, that she was “going

her own gait all right,” that she was “chasing the boys all round the

lot,” that she had “the bit in her teeth.” But at length he reported

that the wind had fallen. Then, the next time, he said, “She’s puffing

in from the southeast.” And at last he leaned his shoulder against the

door-jamb and replied, “You better get your pumps well greased. The

wind’s come round strong from the south.”

“South!” Dady sniffed the air. “That’ll bring her back this way!”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

The engineer popped into the hatch like a frightened rabbit into its

burrow; and the silhouette in the doorway raised the shadow of a pair

of night glasses to the black profile of a nose and stood watching.

[Illustration: _The scene of the fire on the piers_]

In a moment, out of the darkness at the head of the slip, two

figures in long rubber coats came striding into the light of the

incandescent lamp at the stern of the _Hudson_ and sprang aboard. They

were Captain Keighley and Acting-Chief Moran; and they came forward

rapidly towards the wheelhouse, Moran waving his arm with an excited

gesture of authority.

“She’s working back over there,” he was saying of the fire. “You’ll

have to hold her, here, at the factory, and keep her from jumping that

street to those gas tanks. If they blow up, it’ll smash half the ward.”

He ran up the ladder to the deck of the wheelhouse. “We can’t get water

to hold her, back there,” he explained. “They’re sucking air from those

plugs already.”

Keighley looked from the fire to the black wall of the factory, from

the factory to the shadow where the street was hidden, and from the

street to the huge gas tanks that seemed to be leaping and falling in

the wavering light of the flames. “We got the water _here_ all right,”

he said. He asked, “How wide is it?”

“It’s--I don’t know,” Moran answered impatiently. “It’s about seventy

feet from the wall to the nearest tank. I can give you two water

towers.”

Keighley looked back over his shoulder. The boat was lying between the

lumber wharf at her stern and the gas company’s coal pier at her bows.

“Fire’s bound to back onto that yard wharf,” he said. “We’ll be between

Hell an’ Purgat’ry here.” He looked up at the factory wall above him.

“That’ll be comin’ down on top of us.” He nodded at the gas tank. “All

right. We can keep her off them.”

Moran ran down the ladder and hurried aft. Keighley followed him.

Suddenly the old captain said, in the voice of a challenge, “I’ll do it

if the crew will.”

Moran asked, “What’s the matter with the crew?”

Keighley answered, “I guess _you_ know as well as I do.”

Moran stepped ashore. “I’m going around the factory,” he said curtly,

and vanished in the darkness.

Keighley stood stroking his sharp nose and smiling under his hand.

Then he coughed a dry chuckle, turned, and ran along the trail of hose

towards the fire.

He considered that he had “put it up” to Moran. It was Moran’s turn,

now, to learn the danger of promoting dissension in the place of

discipline. Here was a fire big enough to break _him_, if it were badly

handled; and he was relying on a disaffected crew and a discredited

captain to handle it for him.

Keighley smiled as he ran; and he ran until the bitter smell of wet

embers, from the burned wood underfoot, was wiped out of his nostrils

by a puff of smoke that came warm and dry on his face. It sobered

him. He slackened his pace to fill his lungs against the stifle,

and proceeded carefully. A few yards farther on, the expected blast

scorched him. When it had passed, he yelled, “Hi, there! Moore, there!”

He got no reply. He broke into a run, stumbled over the hose, and

fell among the burned beams and steaming ashes; and as he sprang to

his feet again, the smoke was cut by a quivering current of heat, and

he saw his crew crouched in a line behind their pipes, fighting in a

wide semi-circle of flames that held back before them but reached out,

roaring, on both flanks. “Back out! Back!” he called. “Yuh’re no good

here. Get back to the boat! We can’t stop her here. Come along with

that two-inch line! Lighten up here, some o’ you men. Chase back an’

shut off, Moore.”

They obeyed him in a suffocated silence, dragging back the smaller

hose. But it was impossible to move the larger lines as long as

they were filled with the weight of water; and the pipemen who were

directing these, blinded by the resinous smoke of yellow pine, remained

bent double before the heat that came licking across them like the

touch of flame.

Keighley ran to them. “Get back an’ uncouple ’em. We’ll never get out

o’ here this way.”

A man at the farthest pipe pitched forward on his face and lay huddled.

His fellows left their nozzle in its pipe-stick, caught him under arms

and knees, and stumbled back with him. Their undirected stream threshed

about like a snake pinned down at the neck; and the fire began to creep

stealthily across the drying debris around it.

A smoking pile of half-burned lumber close at hand flared up in a

sudden flame. Keighley threw himself on the other men, dragged them

from their pipe, and drove them back. “We can’t fool here,” he cried.

“We got to get around to them gas tanks.”

They abandoned, reluctantly, the two nozzles that were caught by

the lugs in the crotches of the pipe-sticks, and retreated with the

smaller line. But, even so, they had to wait until the water had been

shut off before they dared break the couplings to save the hose; and

every minute was an hour long to the impatient Moran waiting for them

to stretch in their lines to protect the threatened gas tanks. He

was fresh to his responsibility, and Keighley’s cool insinuation of

treachery had put him to the edge of a new fear.

When the men got back to the _Hudson_ with the first lengths of hose,

he stormed down on them angrily.

“What’re you doing? Get a move on, will you? What the hell are you

fooling round with that hose for, Keighley? Stretch in over there,

where I told you! Why the devil--”

Keighley, who had his own sense of dignity, set his thin lips in a

tight line and looked back at the factory. “Where’s yer truck comp’ny?”

he growled. “D’ yuh expect eight men to stretch in enough o’ this

boat’s hose to feed two water towers?”

Moran’s voice rose to a hoarse curse: “G-- -- you! don’t you talk back

to me! Do what you’re told. Get a hustle on, or, by--”

Keighley obeyed without more words. “Come along, boys,” he ordered.

“Leave yer lines there.”

They jumped aboard the boat and cast off. The _Hudson_ nosed her way

across the head of the slip until she lay with her bows a few yards

from the coal pier, her side to the foot of the street that separated

the factory from the gas tanks, and her stern in the shadow of the

factory wall. From that position, she would flank the advance of the

fire; her supply lines, laid up the street, would front it; and her

stern pipes, trained on the lumber wharf behind her would check the

flames there. The great danger of the place was this: if the factory

burned, the falling of its walls would crush the boat.

“Come along, now!” Keighley called. “Open up that hose box.”

His men obeyed him eagerly. “Shine” grumbled to Farley, “Moran thinks

he’s the real screw. If he gets yappy, ol’ Clinkers’ll take an’ bite a

piece off ’m.”

Farley, having always been of the captain’s faction, retorted

jealously, “Don’t _you_ worry.”

X

Keighley went forward and climbed to the roof of the wheelhouse. He

stripped the cover from the searchlight, and ordered the current

switched to it from the engine room; and the leakage of light from

the metal hood showed his hard face set in muscular impassiveness,

strong-jawed.

He measured with his eyes the distance from the boat’s side to the

probable position of the water towers. “Two three-an’-a-half-inch

lines, Moore,” he called,--“eight len’ths. Four inch-an’-three-quarter

ones--same len’ths.” Then he swung the searchlight around to the wall

of the factory, and passed the circle of light, like a great hand, up

the windows to the roof.

It showed a brick wall five stories high and apparently a brick and a

half thick. He brought the light back to the window frames and grunted

“Jerry-built!” He pushed up the helmet from his hot forehead and stood

studying.

The fire, doubling back beside its own trail, where the half burned

lumber was tinder to the flames, had wheeled around towards the factory

with such rapidity that the glare of it already lighted the dark

interior of the building. Where that glare went the blaze would soon

be following; for the windows were unshuttered, the window trim was

bare, and the walls were a frail shell filled with all the inflammable

material of a furniture factory. To Keighley’s mind, it would be

impossible to protect such a structure.

He narrowed his eyes and watched Acting-Chief Moran leading up a truck

company to aid in laying the lines from the boat. Farther up the

street, the lights of swinging lanterns marked the massing of other

companies with hose and engines, in the probable path of the fire. He

heard the whistle of the steamers, the bells of the trucks, the immense

murmur of the pumps vibrating like a huge purr in the resounding night,

and the faint rumor of roaring flames and falling timbers as low and

wide as the reverberation of a surf. His nostrils dilated; his frown

cleared. He put his hand on the wheel of the monitor nozzle beside him

and shouted, “Loosen yer lines there, men. Hey, you at the wheel, ring

Dady to jack her back! I want her in under that wall.”

The boat slid back, paying out its lines, until the captain and the

wheelhouse came under the factory wall again. “Hold her!” he cried.

“Start yer water! Look out fer yerselves there men!”

They scattered as he brought the standpipe around like a machine gun,

laid it to train on the upper story of the factory, and spun the valve

wheel. There was a shout of orders from the deck, answered by another

shout from the engine room; and behind a shrill hiss of air and spray,

a solid stream of water, under the mighty pressure of eight pumps,

shot from the quivering nozzle and struck like an exploding shell in a

burst of spray between two upper windows. For an instant that spray hid

the wall there; then it vanished, sucked into a black gap; and, above

the roar of water, glass crashed and bricks thudded; and the stream,

swinging slowly from window to window, tore its way along above the

line of sills. It rose to reach the edge of the roof, and ripped up the

sheathing boards, and stripped the tin, and burst apart the rafters. It

came down again to the windows, and bore in the wall above the floor,

and battered in the bricks below the floor, and cut into the floor

itself and stripped it to the beams.

By the time Moran had fought his way to the pier--through the rush of

a truck company retreating from a fall of bricks--half the wall of

the upper story had been carried away, the section of the roof above

it hung down in a broken wing, and the stream, thrown up to clear the

ruin, shot over the building, singing fiercely.

“Get yer men away from there!” Keighley shouted.

Moran cleared the bulwarks with a running jump and sprang up the ladder

to the wheelhouse top. He clutched Keighley by the breast of his rubber

coat and faced him, white with fury, his lower teeth bared as if he

were going to bite, his eyes like two balls of yellow glass in the

blaze of the searchlight, speechless.

Keighley caught his wrist and growled, “What’s the matter with yuh?”

Moran flung him off and yelled, “What’s the matter with _you_? Why

don’t you do what you’re told, you -- --! Did _I_ tell you to do that?”

He threw out his arm at the wrecked factory.

Keighley shook his head. “No. Yuh hadn’t sense enough to.”

The captain was a tall, big-shouldered build of Irish ruffian, as hard

with age as an old oak. Moran was shorter, stockier, heavier in the

waist. They drew back from each other with a menacing stiffening of

neck and shoulders. Then Moran said, “You’re relieved of your command

here. Report to me to-morrow at headquarters.”

[Illustration: _They had climbed the bunker ladders, and found the port_