It had to be a tanker with at least a fair portion of its cargo intact, because the _Queen_ was a thirsty creature, drinking fuel not by the shot or gallon but by the ton. "Saaam! Sam _Dunlap_!" I looked up, startled. Five ships away, across the U of the mooring, Vern Engdahl was bellowing at me through cupped hands. "I found it!" he shouted. "Oil, lots of oil! Come look!" I clasped my hands over my head and looked around. It was a long way around to the tanker Vern was on, hopping from deck to deck, detouring around open stretches. I shouted: "I'll get the boat!" He waved and climbed up on the rail of the ship, his feet dangling over, looking supremely happy and pleased with himself. He lit a cigarette, leaned back against the upward sweep of the rail and waited. It took me a little time to get back to the boat and a little more time than that to get the damn motor started. Vern! "Let's not take that lousy little twelve horse-power, Sam," he'd said reasonably. "The twenty-five's more what we need!" And maybe it was, but none of the motors had been started in most of a decade, and the twenty-five was just that much harder to start now. I struggled over it, swearing, for twenty minutes or more. The tanker by whose side we had tied up began to swing toward me as the tide changed to outgoing. * * * * * For a moment there, I was counting seconds, expecting to have to make a jump for it before the big red steel flank squeezed the little outboard flat against the piles. But I got it started--just about in time. I squeezed out of the trap with not much more than a yard to spare and threaded my way into open water. There was a large, threatening sound, like an enormous slow cough. I rounded the stern of the last tanker between me and open water, and looked into the eye of a fire-breathing dragon. Vern and his cigarettes! The tanker was loose and ablaze, bearing down on me with the slow drift of the ebbing tide. From the hatches on the forward deck, two fountains of fire spurted up and out, like enormous nostrils spouting flame. The hawsers had been burned through, the ship was adrift, I was in its path-- And so was the frantically splashing figure of Vern Engdahl, trying desperately to swim out of the way in the water before it. What kept it from blowing up in our faces I will never know, unless it was the pressure in the tanks forcing the flame out; but it didn't. Not just then. Not until I had Engdahl aboard and we were out in the middle of the Hudson, staring back; and then it went up all right, all at once, like a missile or a volcano; and there had been fifty tankers in that one mooring, but there weren't any any more, or not in shape for us to use. I looked at Engdahl. He said defensively: "Honest, Sam, I thought it was oil. It _smelled_ like oil. How was I to know--" "Shut up," I said.