Moran’s voice rose to a hoarse curse: “G— — you! don’t you talk back to me! Do what you’re told. Get a hustle on, or, by—”
Keighley obeyed without more words. “Come along, boys,” he ordered. “Leave yer lines there.”
They jumped aboard the boat and cast off. The Hudson nosed her way across the head of the slip until she lay with her bows a few yards from the coal pier, her side to the foot of the street that separated the factory from the gas tanks, and her stern in the shadow of the factory wall. From that position, she would flank the advance of the fire; her supply lines, laid up the street, would front it; and her stern pipes, trained on the lumber wharf behind her would check the flames there. The great danger of the place was this: if the factory burned, the falling of its walls would crush the boat.
“Come along, now!” Keighley called. “Open up that hose box.”
His men obeyed him eagerly. “Shine” grumbled to Farley, “Moran thinks he’s the real screw. If he gets yappy, ol’ Clinkers’ll take an’ bite a piece off ’m.”
Farley, having always been of the captain’s faction, retorted jealously, “Don’t you worry.”
X
KEIGHLEY went forward and climbed to the roof of the wheelhouse. He stripped the cover from the searchlight, and ordered the current switched to it from the engine room; and the leakage of light from the metal hood showed his hard face set in muscular impassiveness, strong-jawed.