III
THE words were given like a challenge—a challenge to one of those trials of authority in which the trained leader, turning on his rebellious followers, seems to use the hand of chance and circumstance to whip them into line—a challenge that struck the men before him with a little start of surprise that passed over the group like a shudder.
They stared at him. Some of them were pale, with lips parted. One of the captain’s own faction had an odd expression of hurt amazement and reproach. Another was frowning.
“Shine” said angrily, “Youbroughtus down here. Why the hell don’t yuh take us up?”
The captain smiled. He was clean-shaven, lean-cheeked, thin-lipped; and his smile was not sweet—for he knew that he had been beaten by the fire, and he knew that he could have been so beaten only because of the treachery of his lieutenant and the “Jiggers.”
“Moore,” he said, “take yer gang back to theHudson. It’s goin’ to be cooler out there.”
The lieutenant blinked at him. It was the first time that Keighley had openly shown his quiet understanding of the intrigues among the crew, and the change in his manner was a sufficient menace without the sarcastic implication of his words. What that implication was, Moore was trying not to let himself consider. Fires had been tohim what battles are to the general who has political ambitions. That the issue of any one of them might endanger his career had been possible; that it might end his life had never seriously occurred to him. And the Adam’s apple in his throat worked like a feed-pump gone dry as he swallowed and swallowed that fear.
The men looked at him; and it was evident that he was in no condition to think for them. They looked at the captain; and Keighley’s hard eyes were glittering hostilely as they shifted down the line from face to face.
“I saw yer frien’ Doherty on deck,” he said. “I guess yer benev’lent association o’ Jigger-jumpers had something to do with this bus’ness, eh?”
They did not answer.
“Well,” he said, “I hope it’s good ferit. It’s goin’ to be a heavy call on the treasurer—five o’ yuh—in a bunch.”
“Shine” turned with an oath and ran out to the engine room. The others broke and followed him. Keighley, alone with his lieutenant, regarded him grimly.
“It’s going to be a heavy call on the treasurer—five o’ yuh—in a bunch”
See page 32
The old captain had been a fireman since the days when the Sunday fights between the volunteer hose companies in Philadelphia had been the “only mode of public worship on the Sabbath” there. When those fights had culminated in riot, bloodshed, and the burning of churches, he had come to New York, and run with the “goose-necks” and defied the “leather-heads” until the paid brigade was formed and he took service with it. He had been living among men and politicians ever since; and to the natural cunning of thenorth of Ireland “sharp-nose” he had added a cynical experience that filled him to the full with the sort of wisdom that comes of such a life. Lieutenant Moore had been so simple to him that the “boy’s” attempts to supplant him, with the aid of the Fire Commissioner and the “Jiggers,” had amused him like a game. He looked at Moore, now, with a bitter contempt.
“You youngsters in the department,” he said, “yuh’re great politicians. But what yuh don’t know about a fire’s enough to keep yuh from tryin’ to do tricks with one—er it ought to be.”
Moore shook his head, dazedly.
“Yuh’re goin’ to get yer fingers burnt now. An’ it serves yuh damn well right.”
Moore turned away in silence and stumbled out to the engine room. CaptainKeighley, having watched him go, proceeded to examine the shaft tunnel at his leisure. He found nothing but a ball of cotton waste, which he stuffed into his pocket. Then he leaned back calmly and waited for his crew to return.
They were in the engine room, standing in the thickening smoke, waiting for nothing, with the quietness of disgusted despair. Sparks were beginning to fall down through the gratings. Little splashes of hot water sprinkled on them from above. They looked up at the reflection of the flames that were purring overhead, speaking in low voices to one another; and every now and then a man who had gone forward toward the stoke holes, or been down on his face crawling below the machinery, came back to them from a vain attempt to find a safer spot,and made the gesture of failure. A young German stoker was biting his lips and whining like a frightened dog.
The last slow pulse of the engines stopped; the electric lights died out, and the glare of the fire reddened the shining metal of columns, cylinders and piston rods. No one moved. They watched, as if fascinated, the approach of a burning horror that seemed to be fighting its way down to them through the bars of the gratings, snarling.
At last an engineer joined them with a lamp from the stoke hole, and, after consulting with the German officer, he led them all back to the dark shaft tunnel. He passed them through, and slid over the steel door until there was only a narrow aperture left unclosed. He squeezed himself through that slit, and then with hammer and cold-chisel drovethe door home until the opening was merely a crack wide enough to admit the finger ends. The men plugged this crack with their coats. He put his lamp on top of a shaft-bearing.
It showed Captain Keighley still standing there.
“Don’t do that,” he said to one of the firemen who had begun to strip to the skin. “Yuh’ll want all yuh can get between yuh an’ the metal, as soon’s that after cargo gets goin’.”
The man grumbled, “We’ll be sittin’ on top of a redhot stove in a minute.”
Captain Keighley replied, “Yuh can go outside an’ sitinone, if yuh want to.”
Lieutenant Moore took a quivering breath through dry nostrils and shut his teeth on the trembling of his jaws. He could hear a low murmur from the firethat was roaring above decks. The little lamp flared dully on the bearings. Beyond that, there was nothing but darkness and silence and the heat that choked.
“Well?” Captain Keighley challenged them.
No one replied.
“I guess yuh got what yuh been workin’ fer, ain’t yuh? Yuh got me into trouble. Yuh been tryin’ hard enough to push me into a hole ever since I broke Doherty.”
“Look here, sir,” a fireman named Cripps spoke up. “We’re all in this together. There’s no use jawin’.”
“That’s right,” another added plaintively.
Captain Keighley nodded. “If yuh’d been all together from the first, we wouldn’t be here, d’ yuh see?”
Several of the men answered, “Twasn’t our fault.” They looked at the lieutenant, who had dropped his head and was gazing, empty-eyed, at his feet.
“No?” Keighley asked suavely. “Well, it wasn’t mine, was it?”
No one spoke again until Cripps asked weakly, “Can yuh get us out, sir?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. If yuh live long enough, an’Ido, I’ll get y’allout.... I’ll get out ev’ry man o’ yuh that’s breathin’, any way.... We got to wait here till that fire burns down; that’s all.”
The young stoker had begun to sob. Lieutenant Moore opened his parched lips to speak, but his tongue, swollen and dry, like a piece of flannel in his mouth, was too thick to turn a word. The sound of flames rose suddenly to a muffled grumble.
Captain Keighley said, “Here’s some cotton waste I hunted up. Pull a wad off to plug yer noses, an’ tie somethin’ over yer mouths. We’ll be breathin’ scorch before we’re through.”
He tore off a ball of waste and passed the roll to Moore. It travelled down the line from hand to hand—as if for a sign of union and peace among them—like a “pax.”
“Now,” he ordered, “get away from the sides o’ that cargo room, an’ lay yerselves out ’s flat ’s yuh can.”
The majority of the men obeyed him meekly.
“That’s right,” he said. “Stay there now. It’s goin’ to be so hot in here that some o’ yuh’ll be goin’ off yer heads. Yuh don’t want to do that. Yuh want to hang on, see? Keep still an’ hang on. An’ if yuh feel yerself goin’ loose,get a hold o’ the floor, anyway, an’ don’t let go.”
He took up the engineer’s hammer, stepped down to the door, and put his back against it. “I’ll brain any man that tries to open this door before I give the word,” he said.
They were a mixed lot—Keighley’s crew—picked from all the battalions in the city to serve on the newHudson. There was “Shine” Conlin, a blue-jowled Bowery type, who had been newsboy, boot-black, (whence the “Shine”) wharf-rat, deck-hand, plug-ugly and leader of his gang; he had come into the department from the ranks of the “Con Scully Association” to earn a regular salary for the support of “th’ ol’ crow,” his mother; and he was the most aggressive “Jigger” in the company. Even now, he did not obeyKeighley’s orders. Instead of lying down, he sat up against a shaft bearing; and instead of covering his mouth, he filled it with “fine-cut” from a package in his hip pocket and tried to chew it nonchalantly. His mouth was so dry that he felt as if he were trying to chew excelsior; it was tasteless. He turned it over and over in his jaw, until it was pulverized, like chaff. Then he blew it out, with an oath.
At his feet lay a huge truck driver named Nicholas Sturton and nicknamed “The Tur’ble Turk.” He was of the captain’s faction, because he was by nature loyal to appointed authority and solemnly conscientious in the fulfilment of all his duties. He had tied the red rags of a bandana handkerchief over his mouth and plugged his hairy nostrils with the cotton waste; and hiseyes stared and his great chest heaved in his efforts to breathe through his gag. When he looked at Keighley, it was with the mute and patient appeal of a big boy, in pain, looking at the doctor who is watching over his suffering.
Lieutenant Moore, like “Shine,” was sitting, but with his head in his hands, the cotton waste forgotten in them, his mouth fallen open. He had had a good education in the public schools; he was cursed with the imagination of the trained mind; and he suffered all the horrors of death every time he gasped. He was ready to weep with pity for himself, but his tears dried up before they reached his scorched eyelids. He was the pride of his parents, and the dominant note of his self pity was a sympathy for them in their disappointment in his end. “A hell of a finish,”he was saying to himself. “Here’s a hell of a finish.”
Cripps, a sly youth, freckled and sandy, had lain down carefully on his side, in silence, with the instinct of a trapped animal to “lie low” and wait. He had joined the “Jiggers” because the Fire Commissioner was of their party and he looked for promotion to come when the old chief, Borden, should be deposed and his successor named from the faction which the Commissioner favored. He refused to consider his present situation as more than a temporary interruption of his plans. He kept his mind off the thought of death, and busied himself trying to make his mouth “water” with the thought of cool lager beer in foaming schooners. He even achieved a secret smile.
The other men lay quiet—some flat on their backs, staring glassily at the steel beams overhead; some panting with convulsive chests as the heat increased; some on their faces with their heads on their arms, gagged and stifling; some drawn up in strained and twisted attitudes, as if in pain. In their swollen eyeballs sudden lights darted and burst. Above the noise of the blood in their ears, they heard a sound of moaning. A choked voice began to struggle in the first wanderings of delirium.
“Steady, there! Steady!” Captain Keighley called out. He was standing up, his arms crossed, his face drenched with perspiration—in absolute and unquestioned command at last.
He was still standing there when the lamp burned low, flickered and went out.
The darkness was soon unbearablewith heat; and Keighley put down his hammer and began to strip himself to his underclothes and rubber boots. He could hear the men tearing at their woolen underwear as they ripped it off. Someone was singing a German ballad in a shrill nasal whine.
Suddenly there was an outbreak of oaths. “Shine” had begun to curse. Having arrived at an insane notion that Keighley had penned them all in there, he was promising himself an indescribable revenge if he ever escaped. He kicked out at Cripps—who had torn the bandage from his mouth to get more imaginary beer, and was gurgling to himself over it—and that started a confusion of crazy voices and weak complaints. A man crawled over Sturton and screamed when “Turk” seized him by the throat, struggling, with an uproarthat set all bedlam loose. The men began to fight, clutching at one another, rolling about with feeble blows, writhing like eels baked alive in an oven, like the lost souls in old pictures of hell. “Shine” leaped on Keighley and went down under a blow that almost split his forehead. The place was a pandemonium—awful—indescribable....
Fifteen minutes later the silence of exhaustion had settled down on hoarse breathings and low groans. And Captain Keighley, sitting with his back to the door—his knees drawn up, his head resting on them, nauseated—was struggling against a whirling lapse of consciousness.