How he wished he could be aboard of her. How he would like to help fight the fire. He wondered where it could be. The little boat was heading straight for the Brooklyn shore. There Roy saw smoke rolling upward in great clouds from a pier shed. The distance was so great that Roy could not see distinctly, but he was sure that tugs were trying to pull a great steamship from her berth beside the burning pier. Even as he watched, flames burst from the shed. They swept outward in great sheets as they were fanned by the draughts within the shed. To Roy it seemed as though the flames were fairly licking the helpless liner.
“Will they get her away in time?” Roy asked himself, and his heart almost stood still as he watched the struggle. It seemed to him that the great ship was moving, but he could not be sure. Intently he watched. After a few minutes he was certain that the distance between the pier and the ship was growing greater. But it was still so small that the flames blew about the boat like clouds of fire, and Roy knew that blazing embers must be fairly raining on the ship’s decks.
So fascinated was he by the struggle that he completely forgot the little fire-boat until suddenly it shot into his field of vision. It steamed directly between the endangered ship, from which Roy could now see puffs of smoke arising, and the blazing pier. In another instant Roy saw great columns of water shoot from the fire-boat’s nozzles and fall in drenching torrents on the helpless liner. Gradually the tugs pushed the huge craft farther and farther from the shore. The fire-boat stood alongside and hurled thousands of gallons of water over her, until the last vestige of smoke disappeared from the big ship. Then the fire-boat steamed close to the pier, which was now a roaring bonfire, and played its streams steadily into the flames.
Roy heaved a sigh of relief. “They saved her,” he said to himself. “They saved her. But suppose there had been no fire-boat. The land engines couldn’t have helped her a bit. She’d have burned to the water’s edge. That would have been terrible.”
It came to Roy that a fire at sea was a million times worse than a conflagration like the one he was watching. “Those people over there,” he muttered, as he looked at the rescued ship, “could have gotten away even if the ship had burned. The tugs would have taken them off. But if a ship ever got afire on the ocean the people aboard wouldn’t have one chance in a thousand.”
Suddenly a great light leaped into his eyes. “Yes, they would,” he corrected himself. “And that chance would be the wireless. It could bring help to a ship at sea just as surely as that fire gong brought the fire-boat.”
On his face came a look of deepest determination. “If ever anything like that happens on the Lycoming,” he muttered.
But the sentence went unfinished. Again the gong in the fire-house clanged its warning. It was another alarm. Hardly had it sounded before a whistle shrieked long and sharply at the western end of the Battery. Everywhere whistles were tooting, as vessels exchanged signals with one another in the crowded harbor; but this whistle was so insistent, so unlike the tooting signals all about him, that Roy turned to discover what could have made it. He was just in time to see a little steamer poke her nose out from behind the pier at the western end of the promenade. Sharply the craft turned eastward and in another moment was speeding past Roy almost in the path the fire-boat had taken. The boat was a small, shapely craft that looked more like a private yacht than anything else. What instantly caught Roy’s eye were the wireless antennæ strung above the boat.
Roy’s eyes sparkled. “That’s the police boat Patrol,” he thought. “She’s going to the fire.” And his mind went back to the night when he and his companions had raced up the East River on that same little craft in their search for the secret wireless.
For a long time Roy stood looking at the little police boat as she fought her way through the swirling current, but actually he saw nothing. He was lost in thought. Then a passer-by caught his attention. Scores of persons had gone by while Roy was watching the fire, yet he had paid no heed to any of them. But the instant his eye rested on this man Roy felt attracted to him.