He led them--splashing and laughing and tugging on their hose--into the drip of hot water from the lines of the shore companies above them. The stream from one of the _Hudson’s_ standpipes, dashing against the burning timbers outside, blew stinging sheets of spray through the slits of the cribbing on them. The warm smoke puffed back at them in stifling clouds. “Turk-ish b-bath,” “Shine” gasped. “Ouch! Gee! That about parboiled me lef’ lug! Gi’ me air! Gi’ me air!” [Illustration: “_I’ll brain any man that tries to open this door before I give the word_” See page 40] “Come on!” Keighley ordered. “Turk” Sturton followed the voice of authority. “Shine” followed the voice of the man. Cripps obeyed where obedience had been proved the wiser policy. Farley went to do the work for which he was paid. Their obedience drew them together like a yoke; they helped one another, rubbed shoulders facing a common enemy, and touched hands in an almost friendly sympathy, sharing one task and one danger. They stopped when the hose would come no farther, and Sturton sent back the signal for water. “Some Guinny had a roost in there,” Farley said, peering through his fingers at the flames. “Shine” replied, “’Tust to be the gang’s club-house. There she goes!” He shouted, above the noise of the stream, “She ain’t insured, at that!” Keighley rested his elbows on a beam, rubbed his smarting eyes, and grunted half-disgustedly. To him “Shine’s” playfulness was the ingratiating gamboling of a dog that had tried to bite him. He felt no inclination to pat the treacherous cur; but neither did he purpose to kick him. To Farley “Shine” seemed to show a spirit of good-fellowship that let bygones be bygones and reduced their relations to the merely human intercourse of man and man. To Sturton, absorbed in his duties, it was the encouragement of a kindred spirit who took the joy of battle more noisily than he. The blaze, caught at close range, seemed to snuff out as suddenly as if it had been no more than the flame of a candle; and when Keighley looked back over his shoulder in the darkness, he saw the spark of a belated lantern which Lieutenant Moore was lowering through the hole that his squad had cut in the floor. “There’s the loot’nt,” “Shine” sang out impudently. “If he ain’t careful with that lamp he’ll set fire to somethin’.” And the laugh that followed came heartily from the men. Keighley made his way back to the lantern and called to Moore to put a ladder down. “Fire’s out here,” he shouted. “Go in up there an’ help wet down.” He waited at the foot of the ladder until he was sure that the last glimmer of flame had been extinguished below; then, calling to his own squad to leave their lines and “back out,” he climbed the ladder to the floor of the pier.