The Hudson was lying at the head of the slip, in the angle of two fires that swept her deck with a burning blast of heat and smoke. Lieutenant Moore had turned one of the aft standpipes on the blazing factory and was fighting back the flames in the nearest windows; but the stream was too weak to be more than a small defiance. He had started the deck spray on the stern, and the men there were working in a shower; but it was a tepid shower, and the metal and cement of the deck were already steaming under it.
The coal wharf at the bow was exposed to all the sparks that blew over its great wooden hoist and bunkers. And if the fire took that wharf, the whole defence would be outflanked; the blaze would blow from pier to pier down the water front; the gas tanks would be caught from the rear.
“Hi, there!” Keighley shouted. “Turn yer forrud pipes on there an’ keep that pier wet. Two—four—eight—eleven—Hell! We got to save som’ers. That won’t do.” He turned to Moran. “What’re yuh goin’ to do about it? There’s too many streams as it is. They ain’t strong enough.”
But the acting-chief was at the end of his resources. It was his first big fire, and it was too much for him. He had the bulldog courage that can take up a position and hold it, fighting, to the last gasp of ruin; but he had not the quality of mind to stand on the height of responsibility unbewildered, and direct confusion and overrule defeat. His face was as blank as his mind; and Keighley saw it.
“Take charge o’ that boat a minute,” the captain said.
Moran took a step towards the Hudson; and when he stopped and turned again, Keighley was off up the street.
The old man had a plan—a plan that was drawn from his experience of early volunteer days, when streams were too weak to tear up a fire by the roots, and fire-fighters were always on the defensive, checking an enemy that could not be successfully attacked.
He ordered the pipe of the nearest water tower to be raised to the perpendicular, so that the stream from it rose straight in the air and fell back on itself like a geyser. Then he trained the two deck pipes of the same tower to cut into the stream with two deflecting ones; and the three streams, meeting in mid-air, fought together in a spout of spray that spread in all directions, formed a “water curtain” which no spark could pass, and was blown by the wind in a wide shower over the threatened tanks.
“Shut off that other line! Chief’s orders!” he shouted to the men who were still flailing the tank sides with a solid stream.
“Will that shower be enough, cap’n?” one of the water tower men asked him.