Noonan had a long, round upper lip that met a round, protruding under one in a mouth like a rent in a rubber ball. He opened it, and then shut it again in a politic effort to control his temper, “Dan,” he said at last, “I like a joke, but I’m no more a damn fool than y’ are yerself,--mind that now! Yeh’ve been fightin’ half yer comp’ny fer the month gone, an’ yeh think yeh’ve won. They ain’t botherin’ y’ any now--no. Yeh think they’ve had enough--an’ mebbe they have. Mebbe they have. But there’s them that ain’t!” He stopped himself. He plugged his mouth with his cigar again, and puffed it till it crackled. “Have sense, now,” he said. “Have sense, man. Here’s yer chance to get the best that’s goin’. Will yeh take it er leave it?” Keighley had turned to listen to the tinkle of a telephone bell in the sitting room where the apparatus of the fire alarm was stationed. “Will yeh take it er leave it?” Noonan demanded. Keighley did not answer. He swung around in his swivel chair. Some one rapped at the door, and he called, “Come!” Lieutenant Moore looked in to report, “A telephone call from headquarters. Soap works afire at Nohunk. They want us to keep it off the coal docks.” They were the department’s coal docks. Keighley ordered, “Cast off.” He turned to Noonan. “Better come along with us,” he said. “It’ll be cooler outside.” Noonan had found it hot work trying to lead old obstinacy in the office. The boat looked inviting. There were two chairs under an awning in the fantail. “All right,” he said, and went sulkily aboard. Keighley took him to the wheelhouse, instead of to the stern. There was, of course, a pilot at the wheel; and Noonan waited in impatient expectation that the captain would give his orders there and then go aft to finish their conversation. But as soon as the boat was under way, the men, clearing the decks for action, began to roll up the awning and carry the chairs below; and Noonan looked at the captain with the expression of a man who had been tricked. With his gray side-whiskers and his long lip, he was the sort of Irishman who would have made an amiable parish priest if circumstances had not made him a ward leader--the sort of man to whom politics is a benevolent affair of “gettin’ jobs” for his friends and loyally keeping them from his enemies. The only dishonesty in public office that he understood was the dishonesty of treason to the “organization,” and he despised the political renegade as he would have despised the turncoat who deserts his church. Jigger and anti-Jigger were, as has been said so often, merely factions of the organization, and he could come to Keighley with a charitable desire to convince the captain that he was standing in his own light. Keighley and he had been young together. They were old friends, though they had not met for some time. Yet Keighley received him without trust, and held him off.