He was still clinging to his beam when Cripps rose blowing behind him, having followed up the trail of the hose. But the flame and smoke had already been driven back sufficiently to clear the air; and “Shine” greeted the freckled “Jigger” with jubilant curses. “Come on here, Cripsey!” he cried. “We got her beat to a stan’ still. Take a hold o’ the spout. We’ll slush it around.” And when Cripps swam up beside him and threw his weight on the pipe, “Shine” shouted in the generous exultation of the moment, “Listen to Moore up there, tappin’ on them planks like a footy woodpecker.... Slush her over in the corner there.... The cap’s too wise fer _him_. He’s too damn hard-headed an ol’ clinker fer Moore.” Cripps blinked the water out of his eyes and replied guardedly, “There’s nuthin’ in it fer us, any how.” “He’s a better man’n Moore, all right, all right,” “Shine” repeated. “We’d been all burned to blisters in the bottom o’ that Dutch cotton-tub if it hadn’t been fer him.” “Well, that’s where Moore fell down,” Cripps answered at the top of his voice. “He was scared stiff.” “The damn ol’ clinker!” “Shine” said-referring to the captain. “That’s a good name fer him, eh? ‘Ol’ Clinkers,’ eh?” And they were laughing together in a sort of cowed respect and admiration for Keighley when they heard him say gruffly, behind them, “Play that stream lower, along the cribwork. Them timbers is afire outside.” “Shine” ducked his head, and then looked over his shoulder. The old man reached an arm to the pipe and growled, “To yer right. To yer right.” They applied themselves to their work like a pair of schoolboys caught idling. “Good enough,” Keighley said at last. “Keep that stream off me, now.” And climbing over the beam, he swam forward into the fading glow of the fire. “Hully gee!” “Shine” said. “I wonder if he caught on.” He had “caught on.” He understood that those two men had been the leaders, under Moore, of the attempt to drive him from the company; and he understood from their talk that Moore’s followers had deserted him. He snorted the salt water from his nose; Mister Moore’s claws were cut, then, sure enough. Well-- At the next cross-beam he saw that the fire was blazing far ahead of him in a sort of flooring of loose planks; and he could make out what seemed to be two carpenter’s horses covered with boards for a table, some boxes for stools, and a pile of burning straw that had been bedding. He swam back to bring the men, and found Farley and “Turk” Sturton splashing up with a second line of hose. He ordered them in with it as impassively as though he were in full uniform on the deck of the _Hudson_ instead of straddling a sunken beam, the water trickling into his eyes from his grey hair, dressed in dripping underclothes and commanding four nude firemen who grinned at one another when he turned his head. “Shut off that pipe,” he said to “Shine,” “an’ light up on this other line.”