I
THESachsenwas a freighter of the Baltic-American line, plying between New York and Hamburg; she was tied to her pier in the North River, receiving cargo, that afternoon, when fire was discovered among the bales of cotton that were being loaded into her forward hold; and according to the foreman of her forward-hold gang of freight-handlers, the fire started in a longshoreman’s clay pipe, smoked, against orders, while the man was at his work below decks receiving the bales. According to the officials of the Baltic-Americanline, the fire was “a pure case of spontaneous combustion;” and the newspapers of the day reported it as such. But when New York’s new fire-boat, theHudson, in answer to the alarm from the pier, came whistling up the river from her berth near the Battery and turned in under the starboard quarter of the bigSachsen, Captain Keighley of theHudsonlooked up to see a longshoreman scowling down at him over the steamship’s bulwarks; and the presence of that particular longshoreman was at the moment as ominous of trouble for old Keighley as it subsequently became significant to him in considering the origin of the fire.
For the man was an ex-fireman, of the name of Doherty, whom Captain Keighley had helped to dismiss from the service of the fire-department oneweek before. The reasons for his dismissal need not concern us here. The important point is that he had been a “Jigger-jumper,” as the members of a certain “benevolent association” of the firemen had been nicknamed; and Captain Keighley’s crew was full of “Jiggers” who were eager to avenge their fellow “Jigger” for the loss of his uniform.
Captain Keighley, when he looked up to see Doherty above him, was standing on the cement roof of theHudson’swheelhouse, beside a monitor nozzle that could drive a hole through a brick wall with a stream as stiff as a steel bar; and the fact that he stood in this place of command by virtue of his own cunning, in spite of intrigue in the fire-department and treachery in his own crew, did not show in the look that he lifted to hisenemy overhead. At most he showed only a cool reliance on the streams of theHudsonto cope with any mischief that might be in hand; for theHudsonhad a battery of four sets of duplex pumps that could force out of her pipes as much water in a minute as twenty shore-engines in a row; and Keighley was eager for a big fire to test her powers on.
The pilot in the wheelhouse brought her sweeping into the narrow slip beside theSachsen, riding the ridges of her own swell—her keel all but naked amidships—and reversed with a suddenness that shook her to the stack. From the deck of theSachsenmen were bawling down: “Cotton in the forrud hold! Cotton afire! Cotton afire!” Captain Keighley struck at the whistle rope and blew for tugboats. “Moore,”he called to his lieutenant, “get a lighter alongside here and wet down the cotton I hoist out. Couple up two lines. Get the cotton spray.”
In handling such cotton fires, it is the way of the expert to extinguish the worst of the flames in the hold and then to hook out the smoldering bales, hoist them to the open air, lower them to the deck of a lighter and play the hose on them there until they are drenched. To that end, Keighley divided his crew into two squads, one of which he ordered to remain on theHudson, with Lieutenant Moore, to receive the smoking bales as they came from theSachsen, and the other he ordered to ascend the high side of theSachsen, on their scaling ladders with two lines of hose, to attack the flames in the freighter’s hold. But in picking the men for these separatesquads, Keighley was careful to gather into one of them all the members of his crew whom he knew to be “Jiggers,” and this squad he himself led up the scaling ladders to the deck of theSachsen; the other men, who were not “Jiggers,” he left on theHudsonin charge of Lieutenant Moore, who was the “financial secretary” of the association and the leader of the conspiracy against Keighley in the company. By so doing, Keighley aimed, of course, to keep all the disaffected men under his own eye and to leave Moore behind with the loyal men where he could do no harm.
Lieutenant Moore understood these tactics and smiled to himself sourly. There was another man who smiled—but with a more triumphant expression of malice; and that was the ex-fireman Doherty, who had been scowlingat Captain Keighley over the rail. And Keighley had not been more than ten minutes in the hold of theSachsenwhen another blaze—independently, unexpectedly, and from no known cause whatever—burst out among the bales of cotton that were waiting to be loaded, in the pierhouse, whither Doherty had retreated.
The pierhouse was a wooden structure—though it was covered on the outside with a corrugated sheet-iron. Its beams were sifted over with the fine dust of innumerable cargoes; and its whole length was unprotected by a single hose hydrant or fire extinguisher. The result was a spread of flames so sudden that before the freight handlers had ceased running and shouting for buckets, the fire had leaped to the timbers of the shed and begun to sing therebusily; and Doherty, still smiling to himself, only escaped from the burning end of the wharf by jumping into the slip.
At first, Lieutenant Moore did not see his opportunity; he remained stubbornly aboard theHudsonwaiting for further orders. But when the shouts on the burning pier drew him to the deck of theSachsen, he found that Captain Keighley and his men were still deep in theSachsen’shold with the steamship’s crew; and then he understood, foresaw, and made ready.
“Damn fine management,” he grumbled, “to go down there and leave a blaze like this behind him! Get another line up here!”
The men obeyed with alacrity, but by the time they got water through their hose, they had only a squirt-gun streamto use against the fire that was developing inside the pierhouse’s corrugated sheet-iron shell. They could not see the extent of that fire; and Lieutenant Moore, grumbling and complaining, did not appreciate the fact that in the flames which began to strike out from the windows of the pierhouse through the smoke, there was more than the disgrace of Captain Keighley for blundering in his conduct of the attack.
“Hell of a captain!” he cried. “If it wasn’t for the shore companies now, this end of the water-front’d getgoodand singed!”
The sparks began to blow over on theSachsenfrom the pier, and Moore ran back to order up another line of hose from theHudson. He called to the men on the fire-boat to train a stream from the monitor nozzle, overthe deck of theSachsen, to the roof of the pier building; and he was promptly obeyed; but the stream was so strong that when it was raised to clear the bulwarks of theSachsenit shot over the pier, and there was nothing to be done but to train it still higher, to let the water drop on the buildings, sprinkling them instead of tearing them to pieces. Fire caught the awnings of theSachsen; the firemen drenched them. A puff of blaze reached her house-work; they fought it off. Moore ordered here, cursed and complained there, and ran around futilely; and, at last, realizing with what a fire he was at such close quarters, he cried out frantically to cast off the hawsers and tow theSachsento midstream.
There was no one left to cast off. The firemen had to get their axes fromtheHudsonand chop through the wire ropes. The steel strands resisted long enough to complete the disaster, and when the last thread parted under the axeblades, the current still held theSachsenhard against the wharf.
A stewardess ran out from the cabins, screaming that the after house-work was afire.
The whole catastrophe had developed so quickly that the thought uppermost in Lieutenant Moore’s mind was still his first one of Captain Keighley’s disgrace; and when he lost his head and began to shout at the men—like an officer in the panic of a retreat—it was abuse of Captain Keighley that he shouted.
“What the hell did he want to go down in the hold for, with a fire like this up here? He’s a hell of a captain,heis! He’s a hell of a captain!”
One of the pipemen, (whose name was Farley), without turning his head, growled under his helmet, “Why didn’t yuh haul her out o’ here long ago?”
“Why don’t she come out now?” Moore cried. “That’s why I didn’t. Because shewon’t! That’s why! Because shecan’t!”
The tugs, whistling and panting around her, got their lines on the after bitts and pulled and shouldered and struggled noisily. But by the time they got her under way, the crew of theSachsen, alarmed by the screams of the stewardess, were already diving overboard, and Lieutenant Moore’s men were retiring from a blaze that seemed to spit back their streams on them in spurts of steam.
Moore ordered Farley to go below decks and warn Captain Keighley andthe squad in the hold. Farley glanced at his fellows; they were all partisans of the captain; they had been chafing under Moore’s attacks on him, and they were contemptuous of the lieutenant for the way in which he had mishandled the pierhouse blaze. Moreover, there were only four of them to two lines of hose; and the one unnecessary man there, as they saw the situation, was Moore. Let him go himself.
The lieutenant repeated his orders. Farley sulkily remained where he was. And—what with “Jiggers” and “Anti-Jiggers,” the influence of the fire commissioner who was a “Jigger” and the influence of the chief who was not, the party of Captain Keighley and the followers of Lieutenant Moore—discipline on theHudsonhad come to such a pass that Moore had no redress against a subordinatewho refused to obey his orders.
“All right,” he threatened. “I’ll see toyou, too!” and turned to run for the hatch.
The men grinned. TheHudson, trying to bring its monitor to bear on the burning woodwork of theSachsen, shot a terrific stream, roaring and threshing, close to their heads. Farley said: “That darn fool’ll be sweepin’ us off here in a minute. We’d better get inside out o’ this an’ help inthere.”
They retreated aft for shelter, dragging their hose; and by doing so they left the forward deck to the flames that were blown over theSachsenby a steady breeze.
“All right,” he threatened. “I’ll see to you, too!”
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