Old Clinkers: A Story of the New York Fire DepartmentO'Higgins, Harvey Jerrold
General
Old Clinkers: A Story of the New York Fire Department
O'Higgins, Harvey Jerrold
Fire fighters -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
There is nothing persists among these men as an enmity does. A man who
has been wronged sees the scar of the injury as a mark of inferiority
on him, and his pride in himself is never satisfied until he has been
able to “get even,” until he has proved himself the equal of his enemy
by returning the hurt in kind. “Shine” could not even consider his
case in solitude without suffering. When he was among companions, he
could not think of Doherty without breaking out in new threats of
vengeance, as if he would give a sort of promissory note against his
debt of hatred. He asked everywhere for news of Doherty. His first day
off he spent in searching Coney, with his hands clenched ready in his
pockets. When he heard that Doherty had been seen about the docks,
he spent hours at the pierhouse windows watching the river traffic,
and took his weekly holiday lounging about the water-front with the
instinctive patience of a beast of prey. By the time a month had
passed, the desire of revenge had become a sort of subconscious habit
that affected his actions without disturbing his thought. He went about
his work as of old, but silently, as self-contained as a man with a
great ambition. He knew that if he could wait long enough he could get
his man. He was prepared to wait a lifetime.
Then, one day, two things happened: Chief Borden came back to his place
in the department and “Shine” heard that Doherty had been seen working
as a freight-handler again on the Baltic-American wharves. At meal
hour “Shine” did not go to his dinner; he hurried home to change his
uniform, and posted off to the Baltic-American sheds--and he was denied
an entrance by the wharf watchman. Since the fire on the _Sachsen_ the
rule had been strictly enforced that no stranger should be admitted
to the company’s piers without a card from the office. “Shine” did
not care to show the metal fire-badge on his suspender; it was not a
case for an official appearance. He returned to the _Hudson_ hungry
but full of hope. He could wait for his day off, waylay Doherty as the
longshoremen left their work in the evening, and mark him for all time.
As it turned out, he did not have to wait for his day off. He waited
only two days. On the third day the impossible happened.
An alarm of fire was rung in from the Baltic-American piers.
It found Chief Borden closeted with Captain Keighley when the call
came. Under the eye of the head of the department, the crew took their
places with an easy alertness and no confusion. The chief followed them
aboard; the lines were cast off; Keighley nodded an order to the pilot;
and the boat drew out into the stream with as little show of haste as
a fast express pulling out from a railway platform on the tick of the
appointed second.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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