The men whom Dolger had led down to the _Hudson_ had been drawn from
the squad that had been protecting the brewery; and he had taken the
chance of getting them back to the building, with a powerful line of
boat’s hose, in time to recover any ground that the fire might have
gained in their absence. Noonan’s method of receiving them had been a
deadly disarrangement of their plans. It left the brewery undefended;
and it put Keighley’s men at rescue work when they should have been
stretching in their line.
They got a ladder down to Dolger; but he was too weak to do more than
cling to it; and they had to bring a heaving-line from the boat, tie it
under his arms, and hoist him to the pier with the aid of two of his
own men, who buoyed him up in the water and under-propped him as he was
dragged panting up the slant of broken timbers. He had hurt his hip.
He was too weak to walk. He collapsed on the pier in a pool of trickle
from his bedraggled uniform, and the water ran from his forehead in
the fat pouches of his eyes, and he moaned, “Ach Gott! Ach Gott!” in a
beard that dripped with salt water like a bunch of seaweed.
They left him there until they had rescued seven of his men who were
clinging to piles or floating on planks under the pier; and these
gathered about him, one by one, forlornly, wringing the water from
their trousers, taking off their boots to empty them, or vainly trying
to wipe the smart of brine from their eyes with the cuffs of their
shirts. Keighley looked them over sternly. “Don’t you fullahs know no
better’n to run into a stream like that? Do yuh want to get yerselves
killed?”
“We didn’t see it comin’,” one of them protested.
“Comin’?” he said. “It was _you_ that was comin’.”
They muttered and looked back at the hole in the pier.
“Yuh’ll get killed at some o’ these fires, some o’ these days, if yuh
go runnin’ into places full o’ smoke this way, without lookin’ where
yuh’re runnin’. The chief ought to know better. How’re yuh feelin’,
chief?”
Dolger groaned, “De brewery! Stob her!”
“Help him aboard there!” Keighley ordered. “Cast off an’ run her up the
pier further, Moore, an’ get that line in!” The volunteers helped their
limping officer aboard. “Y’ ought to know better,” Keighley grumbled.
“Runnin’ in blind like that! Hurry up there, boys!”
The guilty Noonan had hidden in the wheelhouse. Keighley saw him
watching from the window, and grimly ordered the men to carry Dolger in
there, too. While that was being done, the boat was run up past the gap
in the pier and made fast again; and for the next half hour Keighley
was too busy to think of Noonan or his victim.
The broadside of streams from the _Hudson_ had checked the progress of
the fire down the water front, and a single standpipe was sufficient to
hold it now; but the roof of the brewery was flaming under a rolling
plume of black smoke, and the excitement ashore rose to the confusion
of a panic. Keighley, on the bulwarks, gathered together a herd of
volunteers, and drove them with shouts to drag lines from the hose-box
and stretch them up the pier. They tripped over their own feet,
blundered with their hose-spanners, tried to screw the wrong nozzles on
the lines, turned on the water before their couplings were tight, got
in the way of the trained men, and were bruised and wetted, blinded,
cursed and bewildered, like a crew of clumsy stage supers caught in the
hurry of a “dark change.” When they got their big line laid and the
water turned into it, the force of the stream kicked them back as if
they had been trying to hold a cannon; and it was only by virtue of
the everlasting luck of the beginner that the plunging nozzle did not
thresh the lives out of some of them. Keighley swore disgustedly, and
sat down on the side of the boat.
The brewery was doomed in any case. He watched it burn.
While he was sitting there, the crestfallen Noonan came up behind him,
perspiring remorsefully, and wiping his red face in the crook of his
elbow. “We got th’ ol’ Dutchman into trouble, Dan,” he said.
Keighley snorted his indifference.
“The boys all work in the brew’ry. He says they’ll blame him fer bein’
out o’ jobs.”
Keighley spat. “It’s up to him. It ain’t up to me.”
“His depaty’s been in there, crowin’ over ’m. He’ll be gettin’ elected
to Dolger’s place.... He didn’t try to save the brew’ry. He says Dolger
let the soap works burn a-purpose.... The whole dang thing’s been
botched.”
“Sure it’s been botched,” Keighley said. “What’d yuh expect? They’re
too busy playin’ politics to put out fires.”
Noonan’s mouth shut. He stroked his chin thoughtfully with a thumb and
forefinger, looking down his nose. Then he went back to the wheelhouse
and lit a cigar.
He did not come out again until the boat turned homeward, with the
sun setting smoke-red over the hills of Nohunk. The wreck of Dolger’s
career stretched from the ruins of the soap works to the blackened
shell of the brewery. He had been helped to his home by a squad of
loyal officers; his deputy was wearing his white fire-hat; and, in the
road that had marked his line of battle, the indignant citizens of
Nohunk were planning a revolution in his fire-department.
Noonan watched them sadly from the taffrail. Dolger’s woes lay heavy on
him. Behind him Keighley said:
“Between the boys o’ the soap-works fightin’ the boys o’ the brew’ry,
an’ Chief Dolger scrappin’ with Depaty Hencks, there ain’t much left o’
Nohunk.”
Noonan did not reply.
Keighley took a turn around the deck. When he came back to the stern,
he said: “Them days is past fer us, Tim. We don’t wear red shirts
nowadays. We don’t elect our Chief. We get a day’s pay fer a day’s
work. An’ we got no use fer politics.”
“What d’ yeh mean by that now?” Noonan cried. “Talk straight fer once
in yer life, will yeh?”
“I mean,” Keighley said, “that Jigger ner anti-Jigger makes no
diff’rence to me. If a man does his work, I’ll stan’ by him. An’ if he
don’t, I’ll pound him till he does. That’s the rule aboard this boat,
an’ it al’ys will be.”
“Yeh’re makin’ a mistake,” Noonan warned him, “a big mistake.”
Keighley settled his collar. “Yuh better leave me to run me men in m’
own way. Mind your politics, an’ leave me to me fires. Yuh’re a good
deal of a joke with a pipe yerself, Tim. Yuh’d better leave that to me.”