The men whom Dolger had led down to the _Hudson_ had been drawn from the squad that had been protecting the brewery; and he had taken the chance of getting them back to the building, with a powerful line of boat’s hose, in time to recover any ground that the fire might have gained in their absence. Noonan’s method of receiving them had been a deadly disarrangement of their plans. It left the brewery undefended; and it put Keighley’s men at rescue work when they should have been stretching in their line. They got a ladder down to Dolger; but he was too weak to do more than cling to it; and they had to bring a heaving-line from the boat, tie it under his arms, and hoist him to the pier with the aid of two of his own men, who buoyed him up in the water and under-propped him as he was dragged panting up the slant of broken timbers. He had hurt his hip. He was too weak to walk. He collapsed on the pier in a pool of trickle from his bedraggled uniform, and the water ran from his forehead in the fat pouches of his eyes, and he moaned, “Ach Gott! Ach Gott!” in a beard that dripped with salt water like a bunch of seaweed. They left him there until they had rescued seven of his men who were clinging to piles or floating on planks under the pier; and these gathered about him, one by one, forlornly, wringing the water from their trousers, taking off their boots to empty them, or vainly trying to wipe the smart of brine from their eyes with the cuffs of their shirts. Keighley looked them over sternly. “Don’t you fullahs know no better’n to run into a stream like that? Do yuh want to get yerselves killed?” “We didn’t see it comin’,” one of them protested. “Comin’?” he said. “It was _you_ that was comin’.” They muttered and looked back at the hole in the pier. “Yuh’ll get killed at some o’ these fires, some o’ these days, if yuh go runnin’ into places full o’ smoke this way, without lookin’ where yuh’re runnin’. The chief ought to know better. How’re yuh feelin’, chief?” Dolger groaned, “De brewery! Stob her!” “Help him aboard there!” Keighley ordered. “Cast off an’ run her up the pier further, Moore, an’ get that line in!” The volunteers helped their limping officer aboard. “Y’ ought to know better,” Keighley grumbled. “Runnin’ in blind like that! Hurry up there, boys!” The guilty Noonan had hidden in the wheelhouse. Keighley saw him watching from the window, and grimly ordered the men to carry Dolger in there, too. While that was being done, the boat was run up past the gap in the pier and made fast again; and for the next half hour Keighley was too busy to think of Noonan or his victim.