XVI
THE men whom Dolger had led down to theHudsonhad 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 thancling 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, takingoff 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 wasyouthat 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 theHudsonhad checked the progress of the fire down the water front, and a single standpipe was sufficient to holdit 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 wasonly 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 toDolger’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 hishome 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. Weget 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.”