He ran up the ladder to the deck of the wheelhouse. “We can’t get water to hold her, back there,” he explained. “They’re sucking air from those plugs already.”
Keighley looked from the fire to the black wall of the factory, from the factory to the shadow where the street was hidden, and from the street to the huge gas tanks that seemed to be leaping and falling in the wavering light of the flames. “We got the water here all right,” he said. He asked, “How wide is it?”
“It’s—I don’t know,” Moran answered impatiently. “It’s about seventy feet from the wall to the nearest tank. I can give you two water towers.”
Keighley looked back over his shoulder. The boat was lying between the lumber wharf at her stern and the gas company’s coal pier at her bows. “Fire’s bound to back onto that yard wharf,” he said. “We’ll be between Hell an’ Purgat’ry here.” He looked up at the factory wall above him. “That’ll be comin’ down on top of us.” He nodded at the gas tank. “All right. We can keep her off them.”
Moran ran down the ladder and hurried aft. Keighley followed him.
Suddenly the old captain said, in the voice of a challenge, “I’ll do it if the crew will.”
Moran asked, “What’s the matter with the crew?”
Keighley answered, “I guess you know as well as I do.”
Moran stepped ashore. “I’m going around the factory,” he said curtly, and vanished in the darkness.
Keighley stood stroking his sharp nose and smiling under his hand. Then he coughed a dry chuckle, turned, and ran along the trail of hose towards the fire.