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as twenty shore engines in a spouting row, and he was eager for a proper fire on which to test her powers.

"Cotton in the forrud hold!" the longshoremen bawled at him from the deck of the Flamisch. "Cotton afire! Cotton afire!"

The Manhattan swept into the slip, riding the ridges of her own swell, her keel all but naked amidships, and reversed with a suddenness that shook her to the stack. Captain Keighley struck at the whistle-rope and blew for tugs.

"Get a lighter alongside," he ordered his lieutenant, "an' wet down the cotton as I send her out. Tell the men to couple up two lines. Get the cotton-spray."

It is the way of the expert in handling such cotton fires to extinguish the worst of the flames in the hold and then to hook out the smoldering bales, hoist them to the open air, lower them to a lighter, and play on them there, separately and at ease. Captain Keighley, in pursuing that plan, gathered quickly into a squad all the men of his company who were "Brownies," as the members of the new "benevolent association" of the fire department were called; and these men he ordered up scaling-ladders to the deck of the Flamisch with two lines of hose. He left in charge of the Manhattan his lieutenant, Moore, who was the "financial secretary" of those same "Brownies"; and he went himself to take charge of operations in the burning hold of the Flamisch.

By so doing, he kept all the disaffected men of his company under his own eye, and he left their leader behind them in charge of the men who did not need to be watched.

Lieutenant Moore understood the tactics and smiled sourly. There was another man who smiled, but to more purpose. He was the longshoreman who had been scowling at Captain Keighley over the rail. And five minutes later, independently, unexpectedly, and from no known cause whatever, a blaze burst out in the cotton on the pier.

Now the pier-house, though covered with corrugated sheet-iron, was wooden, its beams sifted over with the fine dust of innumerable cargoes of grain and flour, and its whole length unprotected by a single hose-hydrant or fire-extinguisher. The result was a spread of flames so sudden that before the freight-handlers had ceased running and shouting for buckets, the fire had leaped into the roof timbers of the shed and begun to sing there busily; and the longshoreman who had smiled at Captain Keighley's tactics was in such danger that he barely escaped from the end of the pier by diving into the slip.

At first Lieutenant Moore was not quick to seize his opportunity; he remained stubbornly aboard the Manhattan, waiting for further orders. But when the shouts on the burning pier drew him to the deck of the Flamisch, he found that Captain Keighley and his men were still deep in the hold with the steamship's crew; and then he understood, foresaw, and made ready.

"Fine management," he grumbled, "to go down there an' leave a blaze like this behind him! Get another line up here, you men!" The men obeyed with alacrity, but by the time they got water, they had only a squirt-gun stream to use against the fire that was developing. Unfortunately, they could not see the extent of that fire; and Lieutenant Moore, grumbling and complaining, did not appreciate the fact that in the flames which began to strike out from the windows of the pier-house through the smoke there was more than the disgrace of Captain Keighley for blundering in his conduct of the attack.

Deuce of a fine captain he was! If it was n't for the shore companies, now, that part of the water-front would get singed!

The sparks began to blow over on the Flamisch. He ran back to order up another line of hose, and called to the men on the Manhattan to train a stream from the monitor nozle over the deck of the Flamisch to the roof of the pier-buildings. He was promptly obeyed; but the stream was so strong that when it was raised to clear the bulwarks of the Flamisch it shot over the pier, and there was nothing to be done but to train it still higher, to let the water drop on the buildings, sprinkling them instead of tearing them to pieces.

Fire caught the awnings of the Flamisch; the firemen drenched them. A puff of blaze reached her house-work; they fought it off. Moore ordered here, cursed and complained there, and ran around futilely; and, at last, realizing what a fire he was at such close quarters with, he cried out frantically to cast off the hawsers and tow the Flamisch to midstream. There was no one left on the pier to cast off. The firemen had to get their axes and chop through the wire ropes. The steel strands resisted long enough to complete the disaster, and