It did not occur to him that the Hudson, drawn up under the high side of the Sachsen, was a park of cannon in a hole in the ground.
Lieutenant Moore, explaining in the manner of a man with a grievance, took a valuable minute to make the situation plain. He made it plainer than he knew. Keighley narrowed his old eyes and nodded. “Back out, boys!” he called. “Leave yer lines. We’ll pick ’em up from the deck.”
The men dropped their hose and climbed up the ladders; and as soon as they had passed the orlop deck it was evident to them that they were in a trap. Flames were blowing across the hatch above them, as if the very air had suddenly become inflammable and taken fire from the fierce heat of the July sun. Captain Keighley led up the ladders until he was almost at the top—and then dropped down again. There was no escape by that way.
“We’ll have to go aft between decks,” he said.
An officer of the Sachsen, who had remained with the firemen fighting the fire, replied in broken English that this forward hold was shut off from the rest of the boat by two bulkheads and a cross-bunker.
Captain Keighley said, “Here! You know yer own boat. Take us out o’ here.”
The German shook his big, blond head, thought a moment, shook it again, and then made a pass with his hand and nodded.
He dropped down the ladder, and they followed him, choking, back to the deep hold. He groped his way aft in the smoke to the partition of steel plates that makes the after wall of the cargo room, and there he stopped. They heard him beating on the plates with the dull blows of a fat fist. One of the firemen passed him a belt hatchet. He rang it on the bulkhead.
There was no answer.
Captain Keighley seized it and rapped like a miner signalling for aid.