In handling such cotton fires, it is the way of the expert to extinguish the worst of the flames in the hold and then to hook out the smoldering bales, hoist them to the open air, lower them to the deck of a lighter and play the hose on them there until they are drenched. To that end, Keighley divided his crew into two squads, one of which he ordered to remain on the _Hudson_, with Lieutenant Moore, to receive the smoking bales as they came from the _Sachsen_, and the other he ordered to ascend the high side of the _Sachsen_, on their scaling ladders with two lines of hose, to attack the flames in the freighter’s hold. But in picking the men for these separate squads, Keighley was careful to gather into one of them all the members of his crew whom he knew to be “Jiggers,” and this squad he himself led up the scaling ladders to the deck of the _Sachsen_; the other men, who were not “Jiggers,” he left on the _Hudson_ in charge of Lieutenant Moore, who was the “financial secretary” of the association and the leader of the conspiracy against Keighley in the company. By so doing, Keighley aimed, of course, to keep all the disaffected men under his own eye and to leave Moore behind with the loyal men where he could do no harm. Lieutenant Moore understood these tactics and smiled to himself sourly. There was another man who smiled--but with a more triumphant expression of malice; and that was the ex-fireman Doherty, who had been scowling at Captain Keighley over the rail. And Keighley had not been more than ten minutes in the hold of the _Sachsen_ when another blaze--independently, unexpectedly, and from no known cause whatever--burst out among the bales of cotton that were waiting to be loaded, in the pierhouse, whither Doherty had retreated. The pierhouse was a wooden structure--though it was covered on the outside with a corrugated sheet-iron. Its beams were sifted over with the fine dust of innumerable cargoes; and its whole length was unprotected by a single hose hydrant or fire extinguisher. The result was a spread of flames so sudden that before the freight handlers had ceased running and shouting for buckets, the fire had leaped to the timbers of the shed and begun to sing there busily; and Doherty, still smiling to himself, only escaped from the burning end of the wharf by jumping into the slip. At first, Lieutenant Moore did not see his opportunity; he remained stubbornly aboard the _Hudson_ waiting for further orders. But when the shouts on the burning pier drew him to the deck of the _Sachsen_, he found that Captain Keighley and his men were still deep in the _Sachsen’s_ hold with the steamship’s crew; and then he understood, foresaw, and made ready. “Damn fine management,” he grumbled, “to go down there and leave a blaze like this behind him! Get another line up here!”