The tanker by whose side we had tied up began to swing toward me as
the tide changed to outgoing.
* * * * *
For a moment there, I was counting seconds, expecting to have to make
a jump for it before the big red steel flank squeezed the little
outboard flat against the piles.
But I got it started--just about in time. I squeezed out of the trap
with not much more than a yard to spare and threaded my way into open
water.
There was a large, threatening sound, like an enormous slow cough.
I rounded the stern of the last tanker between me and open water, and
looked into the eye of a fire-breathing dragon.
Vern and his cigarettes! The tanker was loose and ablaze, bearing down
on me with the slow drift of the ebbing tide. From the hatches on the
forward deck, two fountains of fire spurted up and out, like enormous
nostrils spouting flame. The hawsers had been burned through, the ship
was adrift, I was in its path--
And so was the frantically splashing figure of Vern Engdahl, trying
desperately to swim out of the way in the water before it.
What kept it from blowing up in our faces I will never know, unless it
was the pressure in the tanks forcing the flame out; but it didn't.
Not just then. Not until I had Engdahl aboard and we were out in the
middle of the Hudson, staring back; and then it went up all right, all
at once, like a missile or a volcano; and there had been fifty tankers
in that one mooring, but there weren't any any more, or not in shape
for us to use.