The men obeyed with alacrity, but by the time they got water through their hose, they had only a squirt-gun stream to use against the fire that was developing inside the pierhouse’s corrugated sheet-iron shell. They could not see the extent of that fire; and Lieutenant Moore, grumbling and complaining, did not appreciate the fact that in the flames which began to strike out from the windows of the pierhouse through the smoke, there was more than the disgrace of Captain Keighley for blundering in his conduct of the attack. “Hell of a captain!” he cried. “If it wasn’t for the shore companies now, this end of the water-front’d get _good_ and singed!” The sparks began to blow over on the _Sachsen_ from the pier, and Moore ran back to order up another line of hose from the _Hudson_. He called to the men on the fire-boat to train a stream from the monitor nozzle, over the deck of the _Sachsen_, to the roof of the pier building; and he was promptly obeyed; but the stream was so strong that when it was raised to clear the bulwarks of the _Sachsen_ it shot over the pier, and there was nothing to be done but to train it still higher, to let the water drop on the buildings, sprinkling them instead of tearing them to pieces. Fire caught the awnings of the _Sachsen_; the firemen drenched them. A puff of blaze reached her house-work; they fought it off. Moore ordered here, cursed and complained there, and ran around futilely; and, at last, realizing with what a fire he was at such close quarters, he cried out frantically to cast off the hawsers and tow the _Sachsen_ to midstream. There was no one left to cast off. The firemen had to get their axes from the _Hudson_ and chop through the wire ropes. The steel strands resisted long enough to complete the disaster, and when the last thread parted under the axeblades, the current still held the _Sachsen_ hard against the wharf. A stewardess ran out from the cabins, screaming that the after house-work was afire. The whole catastrophe had developed so quickly that the thought uppermost in Lieutenant Moore’s mind was still his first one of Captain Keighley’s disgrace; and when he lost his head and began to shout at the men--like an officer in the panic of a retreat--it was abuse of Captain Keighley that he shouted. “What the hell did he want to go down in the hold for, with a fire like this up here? He’s a hell of a captain, _he_ is! He’s a hell of a captain!” One of the pipemen, (whose name was Farley), without turning his head, growled under his helmet, “Why didn’t yuh haul her out o’ here long ago?” “Why don’t she come out now?” Moore cried. “That’s why I didn’t. Because she _won’t_! That’s why! Because she _can’t_!”