The fire on the _Sachsen_ had been discovered when the freight-handlers returned to work after their midday meal. All that afternoon the boat burned and drifted; and by nightfall she was beached, on the Jersey mudflats, with her paint peeled off her sides, her funnels blackened, her upper works a skeleton of blistered metal, lying, grey and hot, like a smoking fire-log, and steaming where the streams from the tugs and fire-boats struck her. The _Hudson_ had followed her, with Deputy-Chief Moran in charge, the remnants of Keighley’s crew working desperately to drown out the fire. They had given up all hope of saving Keighley and the men who were with him, but they did not give up the appearance or the efforts of hope, although there had not been a sound or a sight of life on the _Sachsen_ for eight hours, now, and she was slowly settling with the tons of water that were being poured into her cargo holds. “It’s no use,” Moran said, with the coming of darkness--and relinquished even the pretence of the possibility of a rescue. He went to shelter himself, behind the _Hudson’s_ wheelhouse, from the radiated heat of the smoldering hulk, his mind busy with the affairs of the department. He heard a noise of hammering that seemed to come from the _Sachsen_, and he thought it was the sound of a pump set going by some crazy accident of the fire. At a shout from a fireman on the other side of the _Hudson_, he came out again to the bows wearily. “I saw a light,” the man cried. “There!” The spark of a lantern was swinging from side to side on the _Sachsen_ high up, amidships. They howled, “Hi! Hi! Hullo! All right! All right, boys! Hol’ on!” “Turn the spray on the deck here,” Moran ordered. “Half speed ahead. There’s someone alive on her.... Good _God_!” The heat, as the _Hudson_ crept in, dried their eyes till they were half blinded by a blur of tears. Seen through these, the light swung big in the darkness. “Who is it? Who is it?” they called. A weak hail answered them. The dripping fender of hemp on the nose of the _Hudson_ touched the side of the _Sachsen_ and steamed on the hot metal. Erect in the bows, drenched with the spray of the hose, Moran cried in a voice of suffocation, “Jump!” [Illustration: _Dotted line shows passage of Keighley’s men from forward cargo room to shaft tunnel_ _They finally escaped through bunkers amidships beside the boilers and stoke holes_]