The pilot answered several times, indifferently, that she was “going her own gait all right,” that she was “chasing the boys all round the lot,” that she had “the bit in her teeth.” But at length he reported that the wind had fallen. Then, the next time, he said, “She’s puffing in from the southeast.” And at last he leaned his shoulder against the door-jamb and replied, “You better get your pumps well greased. The wind’s come round strong from the south.” “South!” Dady sniffed the air. “That’ll bring her back this way!” “That’s what I’m telling you.” The engineer popped into the hatch like a frightened rabbit into its burrow; and the silhouette in the doorway raised the shadow of a pair of night glasses to the black profile of a nose and stood watching. [Illustration: _The scene of the fire on the piers_] In a moment, out of the darkness at the head of the slip, two figures in long rubber coats came striding into the light of the incandescent lamp at the stern of the _Hudson_ and sprang aboard. They were Captain Keighley and Acting-Chief Moran; and they came forward rapidly towards the wheelhouse, Moran waving his arm with an excited gesture of authority. “She’s working back over there,” he was saying of the fire. “You’ll have to hold her, here, at the factory, and keep her from jumping that street to those gas tanks. If they blow up, it’ll smash half the ward.” He ran up the ladder to the deck of the wheelhouse. “We can’t get water to hold her, back there,” he explained. “They’re sucking air from those plugs already.” Keighley looked from the fire to the black wall of the factory, from the factory to the shadow where the street was hidden, and from the street to the huge gas tanks that seemed to be leaping and falling in the wavering light of the flames. “We got the water _here_ all right,” he said. He asked, “How wide is it?” “It’s--I don’t know,” Moran answered impatiently. “It’s about seventy feet from the wall to the nearest tank. I can give you two water towers.” Keighley looked back over his shoulder. The boat was lying between the lumber wharf at her stern and the gas company’s coal pier at her bows. “Fire’s bound to back onto that yard wharf,” he said. “We’ll be between Hell an’ Purgat’ry here.” He looked up at the factory wall above him. “That’ll be comin’ down on top of us.” He nodded at the gas tank. “All right. We can keep her off them.” Moran ran down the ladder and hurried aft. Keighley followed him. Suddenly the old captain said, in the voice of a challenge, “I’ll do it if the crew will.” Moran asked, “What’s the matter with the crew?” Keighley answered, “I guess _you_ know as well as I do.” Moran stepped ashore. “I’m going around the factory,” he said curtly, and vanished in the darkness. Keighley stood stroking his sharp nose and smiling under his hand. Then he coughed a dry chuckle, turned, and ran along the trail of hose towards the fire.