He smoked resentfully; and the head wind, through the open window of the wheelhouse, blew the cigar ashes in his eyes. Keighley stood at the pilot’s shoulder, his hands behind him, pretending that he was watching innocently the course they steered. He said, at last, “Volunteer firemen up to Nohunk.” Noonan blinked and grunted. Keighley glanced at him slyly. After a pause he added, “It’ll remind y’ of ol’ times.” [Illustration: _He began to screw out the tortuous scrawl of his report_ See page 68] Noonan understood that Keighley was trying to placate him; and he was willing to be placated. He was not shrewd enough to see that the captain was playing on him. He smoked, somewhat mollified. “Ol’ Dolger,” Keighley said, “the may’r--er whatever he is--he’s got all the boys with him. They elect him to ev’rythin’ up there.... D’ yuh remember the Red Crows?” Noonan made an amicable sound of assent in his throat. “Dolger’ll remind y’ o’ Nip himself.” The memory of the past--the past that has always such a poetical appeal for the Celt--twisted Noonan’s lips in a pleased, reluctant smile. “Nip was a great boy,” he said. “A great boy!” The boat was then darting and dodging through the cross traffic of the lower river. By the time the railroad terminals were passed and the breeze began to come, less bituminous, from open water, Noonan was laughing and talking, with his hat on the back of his head and a blur in his eyes. “D’ yeh mind,” he would say,--“d’ yeh mind the time I put th’ ash-bar’l over the hydrant, an’ the boys o’ Big Six went by it? Ho-ho! They near broke ev’ry bone in me body!” Or: “Will y’ ever ferget the night we run Silver Nine into the ditch at the foot o’ Chatham Hill?” Or: “Hurley, was it? Well, any way, he put his fist into me mouth, just as I opened it to yell ‘She’s over!’ an’ I set down in the road an’ coughed up teeth be the hand’ful.” Keighley nodded and coughed, puckered his eyes appreciatively, and cracked his finger joints behind his back. He did not laugh; it was as hard for Keighley to laugh as it is for most men to sing--when sober. Besides, he knew enough of Noonan to understand that although the politician’s joviality was not all assumed--although even the fond moisture of his eye was not from the eye only--old friendships would not change present policies, and Noonan did not intend that they should. When Keighley caught the warm odors of fields and orchards from the Nohunk shore, he reached mechanically for the pilot’s glasses. “Them was wild days,” he said, focusing the binoculars. “We ust to hang together well enough _then_, Dan,” Noonan insinuated. Keighley studied a mist of light smoke that lay along the water’s edge, and worked his lips in the twitching of a dryly contemptuous smile. Then he dropped his cap on the chair beside him--without lowering the glasses--and with one hand began to loosen his necktie. “Looks like Dolger’s got his work cut out fer ’m,” he said.