Noonan had found it hot work trying to lead old obstinacy in the office. The boat looked inviting. There were two chairs under an awning in the fantail. “All right,” he said, and went sulkily aboard.
Keighley took him to the wheelhouse, instead of to the stern. There was, of course, a pilot at the wheel; and Noonan waited in impatient expectation that the captain would give his orders there and then go aft to finish their conversation. But as soon as the boat was under way, the men, clearing the decks for action, began to roll up the awning and carry the chairs below; and Noonan looked at the captain with the expression of a man who had been tricked.
With his gray side-whiskers and his long lip, he was the sort of Irishman who would have made an amiable parish priest if circumstances had not made him a ward leader—the sort of man to whom politics is a benevolent affair of “gettin’ jobs” for his friends and loyally keeping them from his enemies. The only dishonesty in public office that he understood was the dishonesty of treason to the “organization,” and he despised the political renegade as he would have despised the turncoat who deserts his church.
Jigger and anti-Jigger were, as has been said so often, merely factions of the organization, and he could come to Keighley with a charitable desire to convince the captain that he was standing in his own light. Keighley and he had been young together. They were old friends, though they had not met for some time. Yet Keighley received him without trust, and held him off.
He smoked resentfully; and the head wind, through the open window of the wheelhouse, blew the cigar ashes in his eyes.
Keighley stood at the pilot’s shoulder, his hands behind him, pretending that he was watching innocently the course they steered. He said, at last, “Volunteer firemen up to Nohunk.”
Noonan blinked and grunted.
Keighley glanced at him slyly. After a pause he added, “It’ll remind y’ of ol’ times.”
He began to screw out the tortuous scrawl of his report