As the streams of water plunged against the steel wall Dan turned to his employer.
"You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Howland?"
"Yes, I want to compliment you on your discipline and—and what is the exact situation?"
"Not so good; but a working chance. It will be a short and sharp go; for the hold's lined with tar and sugar reek—otherwise the cotton might go for days. It won't in that hold, though. The fight'll be right here. If it breaks through into this we've got to run; if not, it will burn out where it is."
"What are the chances that it won't?"
"Why, you know more about the structural strength of this boat than I do. To be honest, I never liked your bulkheads, else I would have opened a stop-cock and flooded the hold long ago. Still, what water would burst through, fire might not."
Horace Howland, who had paid his own price for the Tampico, and who by the same token had his own opinion of her, said nothing.
"I have arranged about the boats," resumed Dan. "If the worst comes, my men know what to do and they are the men to do it. It's not too rough to launch safely. Now, Mr. Howland, I've wasted too much time talking. Don't forget to send two men to Mr. Jackson," and he sprang up the ladder and hurried forward.
The feet of the men at work over the burning hold were blistering. Dan yanked out an inch hose and set a cabin boy to sluicing the deck where they stood, sending up dense clouds of enveloping steam. A broad tongue of blue flame curled out of the port hawse-hole, licked along the half-protruding anchor, rose above the rail, and then burst into a puff of red fire which floated away in the wind. A cargo port door warped in the heat, buckled outward, tearing plates and rivets with a rasping screech, and dropped hissing into the black waters; and the wind, blowing from astern, was sucked into the opening, fanning the flames to screaming ferocity.
The tale was plain for every one, and Dan read it to the last word. Water would be of more service elsewhere, that was certain. So he withdrew the four crews from their hose vents, ordered two of them to take their lines into the second hold, and set the others flooding the deck. He shifted two of his seven-inch steam lines to the midship plugs, and then followed the hose men, who had joined their comrades in the darkness of the second hold. Streams of water were hissing against the steel barrier and flying back at the faces of the nozzle men in hot spray.