“Shine” dropped to the deck with a chuckle and began a race for “first in,” gurgling an excited profanity as he kicked off his rubber boots. Diving on the water-front, on a midsummer night, was a way of earning a living that appealed to him. “Beat y’ in, Turk,” he challenged. “Come on. Saturday’s wash-day.” “Turk” asked cautiously, “What’s on?” He had an instinctive distrust of “Shine” as a type, as well as an acquired distrust of him as a “Jigger.” “Nuthin’ ’s on,” “Shine” said as he came out of his blue flannel shirt and stood up, grinning, naked. “Where’s the rope?” Farley, from behind, tied one line under his arms. Captain Keighley gave him the end of another. “That’s fer signalin’,” he explained. “Jerk it three times if yuh want us to haul y’ out. Jerk it twice if yuh’re all right an’ ready to take in the house. We’ll tie this other one to the pipe. Jerk once to start the water. Over yuh go now!... Strip!” he said to Cripps. “Shine” sprang upon the bulwarks, took the signaling-line between his teeth, and dived. He struck the water and went in as clean as a fish. A few bubbles rose and burst in the streak of light from the wheelhouse window. The lines paid out smoothly through Keighley’s hand. They stopped--and he began to gather in the slack, stealthily. They jerked forward, and ran out with a rush. There was the pause of a crisis. Then the signal-line jumped twice, and Keighley cried, “He’s in! Give him the pipe! Light up there!” Cripps tossed the nozzle overboard, and the others ran aft to lighten up the hose. VII “Shine” had wriggled through the opening in the timbers and risen under the floor of the pier in a dense smoke that was lit with flames. He had swum to a slimy cross-beam and straddled it to draw a deep breath through a crack in the cribbing. And now he was hauling in the line, hand over hand, choking and sputtering. The nozzle rose between his knees. He jerked once on the signal rope, heard Keighley’s muffled cry of “Start yer water!” and threw himself on his belly on the nozzle and the beam. The air gushed in a mighty sough from the pipe. The hose bucked and kicked up under him. The stream spurted from it and broke, hissing, on the blaze. “Go it!” he said, through his teeth, riding the hose and clinging to the slippery timbers. “Go it yuh son of a mut!” He had left the weight of discipline on the deck behind him with his uniform, and he had returned to the naked audacity of the days when he had obeyed no rules but those of the “club.” He was no longer a fireman; he was a young hoodlum enjoying an adventure, and he looked up at the blaze before him with a grin. He heard Lieutenant Moore’s squad chopping at the planks above him, and he listened contemptuously. He thought of Captain Keighley, and it was with the admiring thought of a younger “Shine” for the leader of his gang.