“Sure,” he said. “Yuh can’t set fire to metal, can yuh? Supposin’ the heat does swell up yer gas a bit, ain’t those telescope tanks? Yuh couldn’t explode one o’ them if yuh opened it an’ dropped a match in. It’d go out. It’s got to have air, ain’t it? She’s safe as long ’s she don’t warp a leak.”
He ran along through the scorch to the second tower, and watched it pouring a waste of water on a fire that was already held by the hose from the engines. “We’re goin’ to cut this tower off,” he called. “Chief’s orders! Yuh can’t put that blaze out; yuh got to let it burn out. The other crews can hol’ it. Get back up the street there, where there’s buildin’s. Stick to it, boys. We got to have this water to keep her from gettin’ down the piers behind yuh.”
He doubled back to the water front. “Two—three—five,” he muttered. “That’ll do it.”
The acting-chief ran into him in the smoke. Keighley clutched him by the elbow. “What’re yuh doin’ here?” the captain cried. “Why ain’t y’ aboard that boat?” And Moran turned and followed him like a lieutenant.
XII
THEY sprang aboard the Hudson together. Keighley ran to the pipe that was feeding the second water tower and cut it off at the gate. “Get this standpipe on the fac’try,” he ordered Moran. “We got the water now—all yuh want. I’ll look after the pier.”
“Shine” wiped the tears from his eyes and stared open-mouthed. Moran shouldered past him and swung around the standpipe and turned it on the blazing windows. Keighley clambered up the ladder to the wheelhouse top and began to bellow his orders through his hands.
There followed the hottest half hour that the Hudson ever knew. The coal wharf had taken fire, and the full power of the two monitor nozzles was needed to subdue it. Meanwhile the belch of heat from the burning factory, checked only by the lesser streams from the waist of the boat, swept the deck like the blast from a furnace. The paint peeled from the smokestack, blistered on the wheelhouse, bubbled on the rail. The men crouched behind the bulwarks, their eyes smarting, their throats parched, silent except for a feeble complaint from “Shine” that they would be “spittin’ black buttons fer a month.” Moran clung to his standpipe. Lieutenant Moore struggled against the kick of a pipe which he had turned on the burning pier at the stern of the boat. Keighley’s voice came to them all, thin and far, “To yer left, Moore. Higher up there, chief. Stick to it, boys!”