When the steamboat Leo of the Coney Island fleet came paddling down stream towards him, he took her appearance at that moment as a particular spite of fate. The captain was at a window of the pilothouse; the first mate was standing over a group of deckmen who were hauling on the rope that raised a fender; a waiter leaned on the shutter of a forward gangway, idle. And “Shine” saw his past float by him, in the sunlight, like a vision.
He watched it biliously. From a port of the forward cabin a thin curl of smoke was drifting out, and he imagined a contented stoker lolling on the warm deck within, sucking the reed stem of a corncob pipe. He remembered a boat that had been set afire by the butt of a cigarette thrown overboard from an upper deck and carried by the wind, through that very port, into the ropes and rags and paint-pots of that cabin, he hoped the smoker in there, now, would start a blaze. He hoped the old tub would burn before his eyes.
“Gee!” he said. “He must be smokin’ a Dutchman’s pipe.”
When the steamer was abreast of them, Sturton suddenly jumped up. “That’s afire, ain’t it?”
It was; and “Shine” came to his feet as if he had been lifted by the yell of derision with which he greeted the fact that it was a fire. “Hi-yi! Ca-a-ap! Mucka-hi! Ain’t y’ afire forrud?” He waved his arms and pointed. “Yuh’re smokin’ in the peak!”
Sturton put his hands to his cheeks and bellowed, “Smoke up in front!”
Their voices drew the other firemen from the pierhouse; and while these men shouted questions and “Shine” bawled replies, a cry was raised on the Leo and the passengers started a panic across her decks. Almost immediately, her whistle shrilled the repeated signal of distress; Captain Keighley ordered “Cast off, boys;” and “Shine” ran, bare-footed, to his duty.