Keighley took a turn around the deck. When he came back to the stern, he said: “Them days is past fer us, Tim. We don’t wear red shirts nowadays. We don’t elect our Chief. We get a day’s pay fer a day’s work. An’ we got no use fer politics.” “What d’ yeh mean by that now?” Noonan cried. “Talk straight fer once in yer life, will yeh?” “I mean,” Keighley said, “that Jigger ner anti-Jigger makes no diff’rence to me. If a man does his work, I’ll stan’ by him. An’ if he don’t, I’ll pound him till he does. That’s the rule aboard this boat, an’ it al’ys will be.” “Yeh’re makin’ a mistake,” Noonan warned him, “a big mistake.” Keighley settled his collar. “Yuh better leave me to run me men in m’ own way. Mind your politics, an’ leave me to me fires. Yuh’re a good deal of a joke with a pipe yerself, Tim. Yuh’d better leave that to me.” XVII Noonan said no more; and when the _Hudson_ had tied up, he went ashore with a non-committal, “Well, s’long Dan” that expressed nothing but reserve. Keighley saw him go, and returned, relieved, to the work of having the _Hudson_ made ready for her next run. “They’re keepin’ us busy,” he said to Moore. “They” were. In the space of three days, the boat had done duty at three fires; and the fire on the _Sachsen_, of the previous week, had been enough in itself to make the summer one that would be easily remembered. But now, as if to give the men a taste of both sorts of life in the department, the days that followed settled down into the dullest routine of barrack room inactivity. The jigger rang and rang again, but it never rang any of the lucky numbers that would give the _Hudson_ exercise. “Nuthin’ but blanks,” “Shine” complained. “This’s worse ’n playin’ ‘policy.’ Gee, I wish we’d draw a number with a fire on it.” The engineer had work to do, fitting a sort of drain to carry off the water that condensed in the low-pressure cylinder. Keighley was kept interested by the rumors of bad blood between the Fire Commissioner and “the Boss”--or the Boss’s creature, the Little Mayor. But the men had nothing but the shining of brasses and the washing of hose to occupy their few working moments, and nothing but the exhausted interest of newspapers and dominoes to pass their long idle hours. They did not lend any but a languid ear to the reports of the department intrigues, now that Keighley had fought the “Jiggers” to a standstill. They had decided to let that matter rest until their superiors took it up again. And then, one warm morning, when “Shine” and Sturton were sitting on the deck of the _Hudson_, in the shade of the wheelhouse--eating apples which they had picked out of the scum of chips and driftwood under the boat’s quarter--something happened that proved, in its final issue, to have a vital influence in ending the whole “Jigger” trouble, so far as the _Hudson_ and its crew were concerned, although the actual incident itself involved only “Shine.”