The sullen glow of a sunset was smoldering dully over the Jersey shore; and New York was piled up to face it, a Gibraltar of brick and stone, twinkling with its lighted windows and gay with the blown plumes of steam from its roofs. A stiff breeze from the north drove the waves against the bow of the Hudson and hummed in the guys of her funnel. Keighley and the Chief, facing the bow with their backs to the wheelhouse, their chins sunken in their collars, were bent against the rush of air like a pair of old and deaf cronies, their hands behind them, their heads together as they talked.
“It was about a man named Doherty,” Keighley was explaining reluctantly. “You remember him, I guess. Some o’ the men didn’t like it when I got him broke. An’ they made a little trouble fer me—off an’ on.”
“He was a ‘Jigger,’ wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“How about that fire on the Sachsen? Didn’t Doherty figure in that?”
“Well, I saw him there. He was doin’ ’longshore-work on her. He might’ve been in it. I don’t know.”
“Didn’t they stack the deal on you there?”
“I think they did. I don’t know. They got foolin’ with a pierhouse blaze while I was down in her hold.... I tell yuh how it is, chief: it’s all over. They’re attendin’ to bus’ness. Yuh needn’t be a-scared of any of ’em in this comp’ny.”
Keighley’s tone was apologetic and conciliatory. It seemed traitorously so to the chief. “A-scared be damned!” he said. “I got to make them a-scared of me. Who was at the head of the game here? Moore?”
Keighley answered, “The man that was at the head of it—he’s lef’ the comp’ny.”