“Sure, it is,” “Shine” sneered. “Yuh don’t know any better. Yuh’ve never _drew_ any better. If yuh’d been with me an’ Goldy Simpson when we had the front on Tilyou’s Walk, we’d ’a’ showed yuh life--life!” He polished another apple on his shirt sleeve and sank his teeth in it savagely. Sturton did not reply. They ate in silence. “Shine” was bare-footed. He had taken off his shoes to reach the apples, standing on a stringer that was awash. He drew his knees up to his chin now, to keep his feet within the narrow cover of the shade, and he sat like a monkey in a cage, looking over the bulwarks enviously at the free life on the open river. When the steamboat _Leo_ of the Coney Island fleet came paddling down stream towards him, he took her appearance at that moment as a particular spite of fate. The captain was at a window of the pilothouse; the first mate was standing over a group of deckmen who were hauling on the rope that raised a fender; a waiter leaned on the shutter of a forward gangway, idle. And “Shine” saw his past float by him, in the sunlight, like a vision. He watched it biliously. From a port of the forward cabin a thin curl of smoke was drifting out, and he imagined a contented stoker lolling on the warm deck within, sucking the reed stem of a corncob pipe. He remembered a boat that had been set afire by the butt of a cigarette thrown overboard from an upper deck and carried by the wind, through that very port, into the ropes and rags and paint-pots of that cabin, he hoped the smoker in there, now, would start a blaze. He hoped the old tub would burn before his eyes. “Gee!” he said. “He must be smokin’ a Dutchman’s pipe.” When the steamer was abreast of them, Sturton suddenly jumped up. “That’s afire, ain’t it?” It was; and “Shine” came to his feet as if he had been lifted by the yell of derision with which he greeted the fact that it _was_ a fire. “Hi-yi! _Ca-a-ap!_ Mucka-hi! Ain’t y’ afire forrud?” He waved his arms and pointed. “Yuh’re smokin’ in the peak!” Sturton put his hands to his cheeks and bellowed, “Smoke up in front!” Their voices drew the other firemen from the pierhouse; and while these men shouted questions and “Shine” bawled replies, a cry was raised on the _Leo_ and the passengers started a panic across her decks. Almost immediately, her whistle shrilled the repeated signal of distress; Captain Keighley ordered “Cast off, boys;” and “Shine” ran, bare-footed, to his duty. XVIII It proved to be a small fire in the excursion boat’s stores, and the _Hudson_ doused it with a single line of hose. But there was much smoke and more confusion in the bow of the steamboat; and when the _Hudson_ drew off and left the crew of the _Leo_ to swab down the wet decks, “Shine” was hidden in the forepeak of the steamer--behind a pile of cut rails that were used to ballast the nose of the boat--listening to the noises overhead like a boy playing truant.