Moran flung him off and yelled, “What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you do what you’re told, you — —! Did I tell you to do that?” He threw out his arm at the wrecked factory.
Keighley shook his head. “No. Yuh hadn’t sense enough to.”
The captain was a tall, big-shouldered build of Irish ruffian, as hard with age as an old oak. Moran was shorter, stockier, heavier in the waist. They drew back from each other with a menacing stiffening of neck and shoulders. Then Moran said, “You’re relieved of your command here. Report to me to-morrow at headquarters.”
They had climbed the bunker ladders, and found the port
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Keighley turned to his pipe. “Relieved be damned! I’m responsible fer this boat, an’ I’ll take her back to her berth.” He threw the stream down to strike the wall again, and shouted, “If we lay here feedin’ yer water towers till the fire drops the side of a house on us, where d’ yuh s’pose we’ll be? We got water to smash it in now. We won’t have it when we’re pumpin’ yer six lines full, will we? There’s time enough to stretch in after them bricks is down. Look out, there!”
A section of the weakened wall, taken in the middle, broke and dropped on itself like a curtain. Half the roof collapsed and bore down the upper floors; and the stream, striking free on the ruin, began to pick it down, course by course, as Keighley laid the pipe to it.
He did not so much as glance at Moran again. In the excitement of his work, he appeared to have brushed aside the quarrel from his thoughts as he would have brushed aside any man who got in his way at such a time. It was a manner that made all blustering insistence of authority impossible to Moran. He waited for the opportunity to reassert himself.
“All right!” Keighley shouted, at last. “Shut her off.”