And when the Hudson was spinning back leisurely to her quarters with a trail of banana skins in her wake, he said to his lieutenant in the wheel house, “I want yuh to see th’ engineer to-morrah an’ write a report to headquarters on that low pressure cylinder bus’ness.”
Moore looked up to find the cool grey eyes fixed on him in a calculation of how much enmity there was left in him. He flushed. “Yes, sir,” he said, almost gratefully.
Keighley turned away before he added with an effect of kindliness, “All right. Dady’ll explain about it to yuh to-morrah. Go out an’ tell those boys we want some bananas in here. I guess we’re smoked as dry as they are.”
It was not that Keighley felt the impulse of any unguarded generosity. He knew his fire-department too well for that! For there is this peculiarity in firemen: being free of any business worries or other anxieties concerning their incomes, they spend their days in efforts to “get even,” to avenge slights and repay friendships. They are men of no philosophy, unable to get outside of themselves into any calm view of their troubles, incapable of forgiving an injury and unable to understand such a capability in others; and they despise particularly the “quitter” and the “ingrate.” Keighley did not wish to be sneered at, by his men, as a “quitter”; and he knew that if Moran did not help the “Jiggers” in their quarrel with their captain, they would consider the deputy-chief an “ingrate.” The fight was “to a finish,” whatever interludes of good-natured fellowship might happen to relieve it.
Keighley knew it. He merely accepted the truce in the spirit of a “game” antagonist who could fight without malice and win without spite.
He saw the boat berthed, watched the men go off to their beds, and then turned in himself—relieved to be free of his daily reports—with a feeling that the truce would last over the next day, at least, which was Sunday.
IX
IN the morning it was announced in the newspapers that Chief Borden had been suspended, pending the decision of the courts on the charges against him, and that Moran had been appointed acting-chief in his place. Keighley opened his eyes wide upon the news, and then narrowed them cunningly as he considered it. He had expected that Borden would be thrown out neck and crop as a warning to all the “Anti-Jiggers;” and there was a glimmer of something hopeful in the half-heartedness of a tentative suspension. Keighley shut himself in his office with his desk telephone to find out what had happened.