From that distance, the village of Nohunk was a cluster of yellow
houses that looked as if they had been rolled down the sides of the
Nohunk valley and piled together on the water’s edge. Behind them, a
trail of small cottages marked the path by which they had come from
the hill-top. In front of them lay the soap works and the brewery--as
if their greater bulk had given them greater momentum--with their
foundations awash at high tide, on the far side of an open field at
which the houses had all stopped.
It was this field that had saved the village from the fire; for the
local firemen, massing in the open, had been able to force the flames
back on the water front, following them and confronting them as they
extended down the piers towards the brewery and the coal yards. And
Captain Keighley, putting in at a disused and broken pier, on the flank
of the extending line of fire, planned to drive it back before it
reached the coal wharves, and to hold it back until the shore companies
could drown it out.
To a boat that could lift its hundreds of gallons of water with every
drive of its pumps, the blaze was a bonfire. To a crew of men who knew
that they were beyond the reach of the departmental authorities, the
whole affair was a warm-weather lark. Under a stern spray that kept
them cool, they manned their lines in blue shirts and old trousers, all
of them bareheaded and some of them in their bare feet. Keighley, on
the wheelhouse deck, and Lieutenant Moore, in the fantail, wore helmets
and rubber boots; but Noonan was the only one who put on a waterproof
coat, and he was directing a monitor nozzle, under Keighley’s
instructions, with all the deadly earnestness of an old man at play.
Two standpipes were trained on the pier for which the fire was
reaching, and a third was turned on the nearest coal wharf, to wet it
down. But the brewery was beyond the reach of the stationary nozzles,
being across the road from the foot of the pier at which the _Hudson_
had tied up. And Captain Keighley, peering through the smoke, could
see a squad of volunteer firemen vainly trying to reach the roof of
the brewery with streams that fell short of the third story. He was
ordering a line of hose stretched up the pier to aid them, when a
fat man, red-shirted, in the white helmet of a chief, came puffing
corpulently down the wharf towards the boat, waving a speaking trumpet.
It was Dolger.
He was whiskered like a Boer, and his beard swept the embroidered front
of a yellow plastron that reached to the bulge of his waist. He waved
his hand at them, and yelled breathlessly, “Vill idt cost de county?”
Noonan forgot his duties at the standpipe and came over to ask, “What
is it, Dan? What’s he talkin’ about?”
Keighley shook his head and looked away from the spectacle of an
excited old man making himself ridiculous. Dolger ran to the squad in
the stern, and shouted, “Vat’ll idt cost de county?”
“Shine” answered impudently over his shoulder, “Nuddings, if yuh don’t
charge us fer the water.”
“No, dot’s free,” Dolger panted. “Come along mit idt. I’ll show yah vat
idt is to do.”
The men grinned, and went on with their work of getting their hose out
of its box. “Shine” said, “Dot voss Santa Claus in der red shirt. Vee
gates vos loss mit ’im.”
Dolger threw back his shoulders and blew out his belt like a drum
major. “De cabt’n--vich is he?” he demanded.
Keighley had turned his back to direct the stream which Noonan was
neglecting, and the men, glancing up at the wheelhouse, understood that
their captain intended to leave the resplendent chief to them to deal
with.
Dolger explained majestically, “I am de chief. Diss feuer iss by me.”
They laughed with the contempt of the regular for the volunteer, of the
professional for the amateur. They began to couple up a line of hose,
under the lieutenant’s orders, dragging the lengths out on the pier.
“Stob!” Dolger ordered. “Stob idt so!” he was suddenly calm and
haughty. “I don’ vand yah.” They paid no attention to him. He waved his
hands at them, with the palms out, as if swimming, in a gesture that
was ridiculous. “Go avay back! I don’ vand yah. Nein!”
“Shine” with the nozzle, as he shoved past, said, “Run away, Dutchy!
Nix kommer ous. Go an’ lost yerself!” And Dolger put his trumpet to
his mouth and ran up the pier, shouting indignant German to the men in
the roadway.
Noonan had been watching the incident from the wheelhouse. “What is it,
Dan?” he asked. “What’s he goin’ to do?”
“I guess he’s goin’ to give us what Silver Nine gave the Red Crows,”
Keighley answered, without a smile. “It’ll remind y’ of ol’ times.”
“Aw, quit yer foolin, Dan,” Noonan said anxiously. “What’s he up to?”
“He’s goin’ to bring his gang down here to take charge o’ the boat,”
Keighley assured him. “How’re yer teeth?”
Noonan licked his lips. “No!” he exclaimed.
“That’s right.”
Noonan began to unbutton his rubber coat. He snorted, “Huh!”
bellicosely.
“Here,” Keighley said, “tend to yer nozzle. Don’t let it play in one
place. It’ll knock holes in that wharf, if yuh do.”
Noonan took the directing-wheel again, and began to swing the nozzle
from side to side mechanically, watching over his shoulder for Dolger’s
return. Keighley went down the ladder to take charge of his crew, and
left Noonan alone on the wheelhouse top. And when Dolger’s men appeared
running through the smoke with their chief’s white helmet leading them
like an ikon, it was Noonan who saw them first. He raised a warlike
shout of “Hi, boys, hi! Hooks an’ axes! hooks an’ axes!”
The men looked up curiously at the charge of the redshirts.
Keighley said, “Go on with yer work.”
Noonan screamed, “All aboard! They’re comin’! They’re comin’!” And
then, seeing that the crew would be taken unprepared, he swung around
his nozzle to repel the attack himself.
He had had no experience of the strength of such a stream, and before
Keighley could get back to the wheelhouse to interfere, the water
struck the deck of the old pier almost at the feet of the volunteers,
lifted the loose planks on the rebound, and overwhelmed the company
like a burst of surf. Dolger’s white helmet flew on the crest of
it; the first men, taken in the faces with the sheet of spray, were
thrown back bodily on the others; and when the stream, tearing its way
through the planking, struck a stringer that had already rotted from
its supporting piles, that section of the pier collapsed under the
sprawling weight of the fallen men, and dropped them, with the chief
himself, into the water.
By that time Keighley had reached the nozzle and thrown it up. “Hell,
Tim,” he growled, “do yuh want to drown ’em? Get yer ladders there,
men!” he shouted. “Haul those fullahs out!”
The crew caught up their scaling-ladders and ran to the gap in the pier.
“They w’u’d, w’u’d they!” Noonan fumed. He shook his fist at the
redshirts that had rallied at a safe distance.
Keighley caught him by the shoulders and turned him round. “Take a
joke, Tim!” he said curtly. “Take a joke. These ain’t the days o’
Silver Nine.”
He went down the ladder, and Noonan--with his coat half off and his
helmet pushed back from his forehead--remained to swallow and stare
after Keighley, in the posture of a man who had been egged on to a
fight and then left and laughed at when his blood was up.
He understood that he had been made a fool of. He did not know that he
had done worse than that for Dolger.