At that moment a strong stream, from the deck above, came slantingly down through the hatch and checked the bear as it pursued him.
XXIV
DURING all this time, Chief Borden had been at the coaming of the open hatchway, watching the “Jiggers” from the main deck; and, when the electric lights had been turned on in the hold, he had been able to enjoy “Shine’s” combat with the wild animals, from a gallery seat. At first he had been merely an indifferent spectator, much preoccupied with affairs of state in the department; but when he saw the lion driven back among the cages like a doused cat, the shouts of laughter from the men around him set him smiling under his grey mustache. These men, under Keighley, were lowering the big line down into the hold to attack the fire; and they amused themselves by shouting encouragement to “Shine” as if they were following a bull fight. The situation was the funnier because “Shine” was unable to hear them—on account of the uproar around him—and unable to see them because he was in the light and they in darkness; and he whooped and danced about with his nozzle, unconscious that he was playing the clown for their amusement. “Give it to ’em,” they called. “Kick ’em in the slats. Ho-ho! This ’s more fun ’an a circus!”
The chief—naturally a jovial man, with a bluff military manner—enjoyed it as much as anybody. But when the bear appeared, they all saw danger in the joke. “Here,” the chief cried. “He’ll never hold that brute. Get a bigger line down to him. There comes another. They’ll eat him up.”
Keighley and his men ran back to bring up a three-inch line, and the chief remained laughing at the duel between “Shine” and the bears. He shouted, “Back out, you fool!”
Moore and the fireman with him, who were just below where the chief stood, heard the order and obeyed it. By so doing they left “Shine” unprotected from an attack in the rear. When the third bear appeared, the excitement became frantic; and the whole company, from the chief down, pulled on the incoming hose and shouted and laughed together.
The chief, at the nozzle, was the first to see the lion creeping around the hatch. “Stop him!” he cried, to nobody in particular. “Damn it all! Behind you, man,” he yelled to “Shine.” “Look behind you!”
“Shine” could not hear him. The chief took off his cap and threw it down at the animal, vainly. He dropped on his hands and knees beside the hatch, clutching the nozzle of the three-inch line, bellowing hoarsely for water, half-choked with laughter. When “Shine” caught sight of the lion and turned from the bears to drive it back, the chief saw the bears closing in, and he hammered on the iron coaming of the hatch with the nozzle, in an inarticulate excitement. And then he got water just as “Shine” dropped his pipe and ran; and he struggled with his kicking nozzle, the tears of laughter running down his cheeks, unable to see the bears whom he was trying to take in the flank with his stream so as to hold them until “Shine” could make good his retreat.