The _Hessen_ had been loading with a miscellaneous cargo that included
everything from cotton to baby carriages and wild animals. She had
seven cargo holds, each four decks deep; and when a smell of smoke
was discovered in the depths of her fifth hold, the wild animals were
already stored on the ’tween decks of that hold, with the baggage and
the bunks for the keepers on the decks below. To save the animals from
being smothered in the smoke, the hatch of the second deck had been
covered with double tarpaulins; live steam had been turned in on the
smolder; an alarm of fire had been sent out for the fire-boat; and the
captain had whistled for tugs to tow him out from the pier--for the
fire that had spread from the _Sachsen_ to the wharves had taught the
officers of the line to isolate their burning boats.
When Keighley and his men came up their ladders to the main deck,
the first officer of the _Hessen_ received them with a hurried
explanation of the situation, the frightened animals roaring a chorus
in accompaniment from below.
“Can’t you hoist out the cages and let us open up?” the chief asked,
when he arrived.
“No place to hoist them to,” Keighley said, “unless we put back to the
pier.”
“Well, if we only cut a hole in the hatch and pump her hold full of
water, you’ll lose all the cargo in the bottom, won’t you?”
The first officer stroked his brown, German beard. “T’e beasts ... are
... more costly.”
“There’s three barb’ry lions, he says,” Keighley explained rapidly,
“an’ two trucks o’ nine trained leopards, an’ some big gorillas an’
half a circus goin’ back to Hagen--what’s-his-name, in Hamburg. We’ll
have to flood her down without openin’ up. Smoke chokes them brutes off
like kittens.”
They stood beside the open hatch, in the fading light, and looked down
into the dark cargo room. They could see faintly the ends of the box
cages in which the animals were penned; and they could hear, _not_
faintly, the uproar of a panic-stricken menagerie frenzied by the smell
of fire. They could not see the deck below, though the hatch that led
to it was open. Keighley sniffed. “It’s sackin’.” He turned to his
men. “Get yer axes. Bring yer lamps. Couple up the six-inch line.”
They turned back to the bulwarks, shoving aside the sailors. There was
the noise of a scuffle, the cry of an angry oath--and a man ran across
the deck and dodged behind the steam-winch that stood beside the hatch.
He was pursued by a helmeted fireman who came cursing.
“Here!” Keighley caught the fireman by the shoulder as he passed.
“What’re yuh doin’.”
It was “Shine.” He cried, “That’s Doherty. That’s the damn bug
that--Nab ’m, Turk.” He struggled to get free of Keighley’s grip,
swearing like a street gamin. “Yuh double-crosser!” he yelled at
Doherty. “Yuh dirty back-capper! Let me at ’m.”
Keighley turned to Lieutenant Moore. “Bring that man here,” he said.
But Doherty did not wait to be surrounded. He leaped to the open hatch,
caught the rung of the iron ladder and swung down into the hold.
“What’s he doing here?” the chief asked.
“He was loadin’,” someone answered.
“Haul him up out o’ that,” Keighley ordered.
“Shine” broke for the hatchway, with two of the men at his heels.
He was half way down the ladder when Doherty’s voice from below
threatened: “The first man ’at comes down here, I’ll let the cats loose
on him.”
“Go on,” Keighley said grimly. “Bring ’m up. We don’t want any more
_Sachsen_ games played on us here.”
They went. But they did not go far. “Shine” had no more than jumped
down among the cages when a shrill squealing rose in the hatch. A
yell from “Shine” topped it with a startling note of fright; and up
the ladder, over the men on the rungs, there came a swarm of monkeys,
biting and fighting like rats as the men tried to beat them off, and
clinging to arms and legs, shrieking and chattering, when the men,
retreating, began to clamber up. They poured out, gibbering, on the
deck and put the crew to flight. Then they scattered in all directions,
up the derrick to the top-tackle, and up the house-work to the higher
decks. And when “Shine” came up the ladder, with the last little
marmoset hugging his neck, the main deck was empty, the men were
laughing shamefacedly on the bulwarks, and Keighley was bellowing down
to the _Hudson_ for two lines of small hose.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll queer that game.”
“Leave him alone,” the chief ordered. “Look after that fire.”
“That’s what we did on the _Sachsen_,” Keighley replied, “an’ we ended
up in a hole.” He added, in a swift aside: “All right, chief. I want
to show yuh somethin’. That’s Doherty--the man the ‘Jiggers’ tried to
knife me fer. I’m goin’ to send after ’m the four jiggers that’s left
in the crew. I want yuh to see fer yerself about how much o’ the Jigger
bus’ness there _is_ in my comp’ny. I’ll take the other men down after
the fire.”
The chief considered a moment, and let his silence give consent.
Keighley pushed back his helmet from his forehead and turned to his
men, his lips shut tight on a smile.
“Here, Moore,” he called to his lieutenant, “I’ll look after the fire
down there. I want _you_ to take charge o’ that fullah Doherty an’ see
he don’t put up any games on us when we’re ’n under. Here you,” he
called to “Shine”, “an’ you,” to Cripps, “an’ you,” to another Jigger,
“go with the loot’nt. Better take a line er two, in case he lets any
more monkeys out on yuh. Get a move on now. Take yer lamps. Come on,
men. Hurry up with that six-inch line.”
The firemen carried their hose over to the hatch. When the lines were
coupled and stretched in, “Shine” said to Moore, “Le’ me go ahead, will
yuh?”
Moore understood that he was eager to wipe out the disgrace of his
first retreat. “Go on,” he said.
“Shine” slung the lantern over his arm, took the pipe across his
shoulder, and started down.
He was in the middle of the ladder when Doherty called out to him, from
the roaring darkness of the ’tween deck: “Go on down below an’ atten’
to yer fire, now. If any o’ youse tries to come in on this deck, I’ll
turn the whole damn circus loose.”
“Shine” did not reply. He swung in to the deck and held up his lantern.
Two big gorillas were watching from separate cages on either side of
him, their teeth shining under curled lips, glaring at the light. He
put down his lantern and pointed the nozzle like a gun.
Doherty threatened, “Here goes!”
“Tell ’em to start the water,” “Shine” cried to Cripps who was behind
him. He heard Doherty knocking the pin out of a cage door, and he
backed into the ladder.
“Sick ’em,” Doherty yelled; and “Shine” knew, by the direction from
which the voice came, that Doherty was safe on top of a cage.
Then, down the passageway between the cages--in the dim halo that
lay outside the ring of light from the lantern--“Shine” saw a pair
of flaming eyeballs approaching him. He clutched the empty nozzle.
A black leopard crept up and crouched at the edge of the light, its
tail beating on the deck. Behind it he saw another. A third sneaked in
beside them.
“Start yer water!” he called huskily.
Doherty yelled, “Sick ’em!”
The leopards snarled. The nozzle shook in “Shine’s” hands. His jaw had
stuck, open-mouthed. He could not keep his eyes focused, and he blinked
desperately, going “blind” with fear. “Wa-a--”
The hose stiffened; the nozzle kicked up. With a cry between a shout
and a groan, he turned the shut-off valve and let loose a full stream
that struck the deck in front of the leopards and scattered them as
if it had been boiling water. He yelled, “Wh-rr-ah! Damn yuh! Cripps!
Crippsey!”--and slashed the water into the huddled gorillas and stamped
beside the lamp, bent double, like an Indian in a fire dance, whooping.
A terrific uproar broke loose among the animals. “Shine” tugged on the
hose and dragged it in, drenching everything, cursing gloriously.
“Come out o’ that!” he yelled. “Yuh sneak thief!”
Suddenly the electric lights were switched on from the engine room, and
the place blazed up with incandescent lamps. The other Jiggers of the
squad joined him, carrying a second line. He staggered ahead with his
nozzle and turned the corner of a cage to see Doherty flinging open a
barred door to let loose a Barbary lion. As it jumped down, “Shine”
caught it behind with the water; and the powerful stream turned it
over, rolling on the deck. It scampered off with its tail between its
legs, like a wet pup.
“Wah!” he screamed, and took Doherty through the empty monkey cage with
a split spray that soaked him.
Doherty ducked and ran. “There he goes,” “Shine” shouted. “Keep ’m off
the ladder.”
That deck of the fifth hold was a room about forty feet wide and thirty
feet long; but the hatch in the center of it was at least twelve feet
square, so that the deck was little more than a gallery, as deep as a
stall, running around the open hatchway. As “Shine” drove Doherty and
the animals ahead, they had to circle around the hatch to approach the
ladder from the other side; and there Moore and the fourth man had
already turned the hose on some of the frightened leopards--of which
Doherty had released five--and driven them back on him. And Doherty,
finding himself between the two attacks, penned in with the animals
that retreated on him, ran to a corner where there were several cages
of polar bears, threw open the doors of these, prodded the bears out
with a pole, and hid himself on top of the farthest cage.
Lions and leopards would run from water. Polar bears, he knew, would
not.
If “Shine” did not know, it was not long before he learned. He and
Cripps had come as far as their hose would allow them when the first
of the big white beasts, attracted by the splash of water, came
shouldering along the passageway with its mouth open, panting. “Shine”
raised a vainglorious whoop and put the hose on it. It rose on its hind
legs to take the water, and it went over on its back in a deliciously
cool bath, pawing at the stream that struck it rather too heavily for
play. It rolled over, fighting, and came to all fours with a growl. The
water struck into its eyes and into its open jaws; it dodged blindly,
biting less playfully; it began to wrestle and roll about, fighting in
on the stream.
“Gee!” he cried. “This is a garden hose to that brute. Here’s another!”
He caught the second as it came, and toppled it over on the first. It
joined in the game. While he held one back, the other ran in under the
stream, and together they gained ground on him. When the third suddenly
loped up and presented its great bulk to the bath, he began to shout
for a bigger line, retreating as the bears worked in on him. He was
glancing back over his shoulder anxiously for aid, when he saw a lion
crouching in the passage behind him, dripping wet, but of a ferocious
aspect. He lost his voice. He swung his pipe, gasping, at the newcomer
and drove it back. He turned on the bears again and caught them as
they came in a body. He stopped two of them, but he missed the third,
and it rose with an angry growl seemingly right over him and he dropped
his pipe and fled with a yell.
At that moment a strong stream, from the deck above, came slantingly
down through the hatch and checked the bear as it pursued him.