A Harbor Feud

PREDESTINATION absolute, inevitable as the tides, ordained the tugboat McGuire for Tim Haggin. In the beginning she was laid down under municipal contract on plans approved by politics, and — as if not sufficiently damned by that—some one extracted the price of a mahogany barroom from what she cost the city. Onward thereafter, with Misfortune her pilot, as it seemed, she threaded the channel of Circumstance, fast footing toward the end. Hard names followed in her train. Owens, the first at her wheel when she ran among the Islands, left at the end of six months, with reasons intelligent, though profane. McGinnis had her next, and, as you know, he came from the Union Company, whose tugs are the worst in the world. But even McGinnis lost heart; uncommon indeed for him whose berths had ranged through boats from bad to worse, — tugs wherein death hung upon the turning of a shaft.

“ Some day,” said he sagely, “ her biler '11 lave that sudden-like,” — marked by a snap of his fingers, — “ and, by me choice. I '11 not be lavin’ wit’ it.”

McGinnis withdrew, but his expert opinion of the McGuire clung like an orphan’s curse. Politics stepped in to stop the scandal ; but it was little use. Heffron had her more than a year, being desperate for the want of better, with a wife and babes to support. Then, after these three years of uncanny junketing and half her price in repairs, she was outlawed by boycott, condemned by the inspectors, and put up at public auction.

Simmons, of the Union Company, bought the McGuire at the price of junk, and added her to his curios. He was minded to use her offhand as she was, but the inspectors came back on him with a warning. So after six weeks’ nursing in the Erie Basin she drove up to the Front one day, and there was the predestined Haggin at her wheel.

Now there was a soul among the shipping that fared by the name of O’Rourke. He was a husky, dip-chested man among men, with the voice of a freighter’s winch ; captain of the Blue Star’s tug Annie Rosey, and a certain sort of wit. As they say on the Front, he was the Whole Thing. Haggin knew him, but without honor ; for, as a deck hand, Haggin had run lines upon the Annie Rosey. Three months of that was enough, and the last time he stepped from her to the stringpiece of a pier, he remarked in .the face of the world that he would shovel first upon a Barney dumper before he would go back to O’Rourke. Whereupon, from that hour onward O’Rourke rendered unto Haggin all that was due upon this account; and course crosses course many times in the harbor trade.

“ Do you call her the McGuire ? ” he asked, when the tug, with her rowdy fresh paint, lay cribbing at the pier. “ You do, eh? I’m minded of McGuire meself, Tim Haggin, and ye ’re callin’ him out of his name. It’s his sow ye’ve stole instead, and he 'll have the law on ye.”

“ Sow an’ she may be,” growled Haggin. “but I’ve minded pigs enough, Mister Denny O’Rourke, to save her wallowin’ high tide beyond on the Hoboken rocks.”

“ Oh, bully ! ” roared Reddy Rogers, Tim Haggin’s engineer, his heel pounding the rail in delight. The crowd tittered, too, for it was fresh memory along the Front how O’Rourke, but a week before, was caught napping by the drift ice, and shouldered ashore at the Point.

“ Fair words there,” snarled the big man, a brick-red glow of anger burning at the back of his neck, “ fair words, or I ’ll be down wit’ a fist to speak me mind, Tim Haggin, and little pity to you.”

Haggin reached for the whistle cord, and the short, sharp blast brought the deck hands tumbling aboard.

“ Cast off them lines,” he ordered, and the tug swung away from the pier. “ Ye ’re a big man, Denny O’Rourke, and yer fist’s better learned nor yer head,” he called. “ But time’s comin’, man, when ye ’ll meet yer mate, and all honor to the day.” Haggin, solemnly prophetic, bore over on the wheel, and the McGuire, racketing at her high-pressure exhaust, coughed eastward across the stream.

“ Reddy, me boy, did ye hear him ? ” said Haggin down the engine-room tube. “ He was callin’ of her a sow.”

Rogers clucked in his cheek. “ I hear him,” he answered, a doleful note in the words. " Sure and it’s not too far from her kind. Tim, she ’s drenched wit’ lard a’ready, but divvil a bit smoother does she turn over, for all me greasin’ of her machines. What ’s ailin’the boat I dunno, but she ’s a brute of a beast, and warst of the Simmonses at that.”

“ Ah. keep at her, Reddy, lad ; she '11 come round by and by.”

“ Divvil a bit, I ’m thinkin’,” he wailed. “ It’s like that a wrench and a sledge ’ll be walkin’ among these engynes half the time o’ steam.”

Reddy turned back to his cripple, and Haggin, aloft, lurched the McGuire along, her pipes whooping like an asthma.

A sore brute of a boat she was, indeed, yet Haggin had his pride. Above all, it was his first command, and that is much to a man. She was his first love, as it were, though sinful uncomely,

— stub-nosed, slat-sided, and as full in the flanks as a tub. A palsy lay upon her movements; stroke by stroke, forward from the linkhead, aft to the plunging screw, her engines wrangled like a shrew. On the downward thrust

— at full steam ahead — the port column lifted from the bedplates, and for half a stroke, it seemed, the whirling fabric beat in midair. Then, as the grinding crank turned over in its orbit, the weight of metal lurched homeward with a sickening crunch, punctuated by a snarl of steam from all her loosepacked valves.

“ Will ye mind it! ” cried Rogers to the crew, one derisive thumb thrown backward toward the steam-veiled vortex of plunging steel. “ Time ’s comin’, lads, when the string ’ll break what holds ’em. Then, in me mind, the bloomin’ piston ’ll step down t’roo her bilge and kick her daylights out. It’s a sore load, indade, that Simmons has on his mind, but what of us, me lads ? ”

But, as it was said, Haggin loved the boat.

The winter grew, and with it the ice. It bore down through the upper Hudson, gagging the channel way from Liberty Island to the Hook. A white plain, of mornings, lay upon the Bay, and steam tug and ferry fought across its face, driving black lanes through from pier to pier, up and down the waters. At nightfall, fresh-gathering floes wiped out the crisscross lines of the giant geometry, whereupon dawn arose to renew the struggle. Three days of this dragged by; the third crawled into dusk with half the harbor fleet at a standstill ; and more tugs than you ever heard of — loose from overwork — hobbled homeward, lame, their screw blades bitten short and the copper rags upon their strakes.

“ ’Dad, Tim Haggin, you go easy where yer goin’ ! ” yelled Reddy up the tube. “'The whole dommed thing ’ll be adrift if you go hammerin’ head on t’roo the muss. Eh — what’s that? Come down yerself, man, and see it; I’ve been at her wit’ the wrench this hour agone. Would yer look at the beast of engynes reach out for a felly for all like a Baxter Street clothesman ? ”

She was running under one bell, making fair time in the trail of a Staten Island ferryboat beyond the Robbin’s Reef bell buoy. Slouching along, a cable’s length astern, was the Annie Rosey, Denny O’Rourke at the pilot-house window, a leer in his eyes. But Haggin had no eye for him. His sight was riveted to the foremast shrouds of a big Glasgow clipper lying in the stream. Halfway up the ratlines her master stood, a violent, unhappy man, beating to and fro in the cordage.

“ Did ye hear me ? ” yelled Reddy through the tube. “ I say, Tim, if ” —

A riotous clamor of the jingle bell, calling full speed ahead, drowned his petulant grumbling. Instinctively he gave the engines steam, and then, with Sudden second thought, cut it short again, — rank disobedience, by the way. But again the bell tinkled sharply, and a violent voice roared objurgation through the tube.

“Tim Haggin, shut up!” Reddy hurled aloft. “ D’ ye think, by the soul of man, l’m takin’ chances out here in the cold ? Why, boss, ye 'll shake the sow in two if ye go full speed bangin’ into this drift. What’s crossin’ the course, — what ‘s in the wind, anyhow, to go ringin’ a bell like that ? ”

“ Reddy, Reddy,” came the pleading return, “ if ye ’re a man wit’ half a soul, sock it to her, — shake out the last link, lad.”

“ Ah-r ! ” growled Reddy. “ What’s up ? ”

“ Shake her out. I say, or by the left bind leg of the beast of Balaam I ’ll be down there wit’ a wrench, teachin’ ye yer trade. Reddy! —here the voice rose to a shriek, — “ look beyant to the Goosecap ! She’s stuck in the drift; she ’s pilin’ fast forward on the rocks. For the love of Heaven, Reddy, shove it to her! She’s going ashore beyond old Colligan’s bat’house ! ”

A sudden riot among the McGuire’s engines gave answer to Haggin’s appeal. Trembling fore and aft, the squat craft shouldered forward into the ice pack, groaning noisily as in mortal pain, her crank shaft drumming fiercely in the whirl. Reddy, with one hand on the lever, stretched outward for a view; snapped back and gave her another notch. Beyond was the Goosecap close to the beach, and making further frantic signals for aid.

“ Don’t take a cent less than two hundred ! ” yelled Reddy through the tube.

“ Not if I know it,” answered Haggin ; “ but O’Rourke’s got on to her, too.”

“A curse on him ! We ’ll beat him or bust.”

“ That’s the kind, Reddy, — shove it to her! ”

The McGuire leaped ahead, her engines pitched upward in a tense, complaining key. One lane lay through the drift, — three lengths ahead and across an almost solid float of ice. Haggin gauged its strength with calculating eye ; then resolved on the chance. Head first he drove the McGuire against the wall; she groaned as she took it, and, with a sullen lunge, scrambled half out upon its glittering face. Baffled the boat slipped back, a drench of green water surging about her bitts ; then, all hands hanging fast, went at it again. This time the pack broke beneath her weight, and with resounding noises split broadcast like glass.

Grinding onward, Haggin ploughed her through the drift, the cakes astern tossed upon the violent flirting of her screw. Once again she brought up standing, and Reddy, with a mumbled prayer, gave her full head. Thereupon she wrenched the floe apart, and, like a hunted hare, tore down the open lane of water, with the Annie Rosey fast coming up behind.

At each side lay the field, knitted fast by the bitter cold, and majestically sweeping northward toward the studding rocks of Liberty. At its outer edge canted the Goosecap, her cable parted, a babel of orders flinging from her quarter-deck, and disaster close at hand. On the strong flood tide she was driving fast, and with what damage ahead none might tell, when she should rap her knuckles on the rocks.

“ Here, you, Davy, take the wheel! ” cried Haggin to his mate, stepping to the quarter-rail. " How much?” he yelled across the ice to the clipper. “ What ? ” — a derisive roar at the answer. “ Fifty ? Not much. Make it three hundred, or not at all.”

“ Out of the way there, Tim Haggin ! ” came the warning with a blast of whistles from astern.

Haggin looked back in a sudden panic : the Annie Rosey, swathed in steam, was boiling up the lane of open water, a broad wash of foam spuming from her bows. Haggin held his breath ; then the boom of engine bells struck upon his ears, and he waved to Davy within.

“ Astern there, and hard aport.”

Davy Brown understood, and nodded. The McGuire shook fiercely as her engines turned over, and a moment later droned round till another bell brought her to a standstill, full athwart the channel.

“ Hold her! ” snapped Haggin, turning shoulder to the yelling skipper in the Goosecap’s shrouds. “ My job, Denny O’Rourke,” he warned the Rosey’s captain. “You’ll meddle elsewhere, man, or there’s trouble brewin’ to-night. Stand off there, I tell you, and leave this here to me.”

The Rosey’s bell clanged again, and the soft steam spurted from her exhaust. Her wheel was spinning over, and Haggin breathed freely with the thought that O’Rourke was drawing out. But the Rosey had other schemes a-going: she nosed along the edge of the pack, drove down solemnly toward the McGuire, then set her shoulder against the sullen, lumbering Sow and shoved her contemptuously aside.

At the desperate, bullying trick a storm of blasphemy flung between the two.

“ How much was he askin’ ? ” inquired O’Rourke, sneering backward at Haggin. “ Three hundred, hey ? Thievin’, cap’n, — pure thievin’. I ’ll do it for two hundred. Is it a go ? Right! Pass them lines forward, Finnegan, and look sharp about it. Even’n’, Mr. Haggin, and how’s the Sow ? ”

O’Rourke blew his boast that night up and down the Front; whereas Haggin tied up at Harrison Street, South Brooklyn, and went home a violent man. It was not so much the loss of money, for Simmons allowed only five per cent on stray windfalls like that ; but Haggin in his mind foresaw, as in the happening, the ingenious conceit of his enemy’s new form of insult whenever they should meet among men. Black with his nursed wrath, he shouldered homeward through the evening crowd, cursing Denny O’Rourke to the last link of perdition, and still with the rage upon him poured out his tale to his wife.

“ Haggin,” said she, with decisive nods, “ you 're a fool. I ’d ’a’ sunk him did he try his dirty tricks with me.” And she stamped her foot, her eyes flashing, as she gave her mind of the matter.

The winter passed, and Haggin still waited his chance. Trade lay dull, and, in want of better work, the McGuire stood seaward off the Hook, waiting for the inbound craft. Twice the Annie Rosey lunged out of the mouth of Gedney Channel, and hovered by long enough for O’Rourke to sling a taunt across the seas. But Haggin gave no answer, though his eyes blazed and his fingers clung fiercely to the spokes.

One dawn came, with a light air from the westward and a far-away ship drawing up. She was howling inward on a distant slant of wind, and in half an hour had lifted above the horizon till she showed herself down to the royals. Haggin watched her coming; then, satisfied of the chance, pushed the McGuire about and bore away toward her.

At the same time the Annie Rosey lounged down the channel, and, noting the McGuire plunging eastward, tore along in pursuit.

Haggin had half a mile the better, but could go no higher than ten miles to the Rosey’s twelve. Yet, with the clipper drawing up on the freshening westerly breeze, he was fair to hail her first.

“ It ’s him, fast enough,” spoke Davy, glancing toward the head of Gedney’s. “ Say, I hear his brother Petey’s out lookin’for a job. Same kind as Denny, they tell. I see him talkin’ to Simmons over in Dutch John’s.”

Haggin grunted contemptuously, his eyes fixed on the distant ship.

“ Skysails, — she ’s a big one,” he remarked. " Sort of looks like the old Ah Soon.”

“ China ship, sure enough,” said Davy, when the clipper lifted her hull; “ high as a Pocahontas coal barge goin’ dry.”

The Rosey was drawing up fast, shouldering her way across the seas, all unmindful of the towers of spray drenching her to the stack. Halfway to the chase she had picked up much of the distance, bearing southward of the McGuire. Haggin, however, with reason in his course, was holding more to the east.

“She’ll go about,” said he, laying down the glass, “and make it next tack.”

The words were on his lips when the tall pyramids of cloth fluttered fore and aft, while, sweeping about in a majestic arc, the clipper hauled her course — aloft everything full and drawing — and bore upward toward the Hook. The Rosey, outflanked by the manœuvre, lost ground ; but the McGuire, within sound of the clipper’s slatting canvas, rapidly drew down upon her quarter.

“Ah Soon—Glasgow,” read Davy, as the tug ranged up under the clipper’s counter.

“ Ahoy, there! Come alongside, cap’n ! ” she hailed, and the McGuire, dropping aft again, swung round to the starboard side. But even as she loped across the clipper’s wake, panting, swiftbreathed, the Rosey shot across the bow, and, swinging to, cut in toward the clipper’s flank.

“ My job, cap’n ! ” Haggin called out to the clipper, his eyes snapping. “ Usual rates, no extras, and land ye free when she anchors.”

“ What ’s this, Tim ? ” asked the deepsea pilot, leaning over the rail with a grin. “ Is the tug trade growing free with its favors, these days ? What’s up ? ”

“ This here ! ” yelled O’Rourke, driving in along the clipper’s towering flank. “ Out of the way there, Haggin, or I ’ll bust yer bloomin’ Sow into side bacon ! ”

The Rosey’s bow fender caught the McGuire at the counter as she lifted on a sea, wrenching the timbers till they shrieked. The shock threw Haggin against the wheel. He arose, white and solemnly quiet. Walking aft, he leaned over the engine-room skylight and spoke to Rogers below.

“ It’s him again,” he called softly. “ Reddy, d’ ye mind ? ”

“ On deck ! ” yelled Reddy to Benny the fireman. “Up there, now,” he raged, “ and look out for trouble ! ”

Without second bidding the sooty fireman raced up the ladder.

“ All right, Tim ! ” sang out Reddy, standing by the lever. “ Let her go ! Curse Simmons for what he is, and the divvil tak’ his boat! ”

The McGuire dropped back into the clipper’s wake, O’Rourke shooting forward to her place. He hurled one derisive taunt; then his eyeballs bulged.

“Out of the way, there, Denny O’Rourke!” Haggin was shouting. “ It’s your funeral this time.”

A gush of foam shot out from under the McGuire’s counter ; her engines galloped full speed. Head onward she shot at the Annie Rosey, and O’Rourke, caught napping, stared as she charged upon him. As in a dream Haggin heard the footsteps of the clipper’s crew scampering across the decks above ; then a mighty crash roared upon the sea. The bow of the McGuire, raking the Annie Rosey from the counter forward to the bitts, lopped off her rail as plate shears bite through sheathing. Reddy, clinging to a stanchion, one eye upon the tottering engines, sent her astern again. Then a bell above sounded in the clouding steam, and full tilt he drove her ahead on the return. A riot of profanity stormed about their ears, — died away, drowned out in a sudden stupor of fear. Bell rang upon bell in the Rosey’s engine hold ; her screw threshed violently within the sea, but as she fell off from the clipper’s side the McGuire struck her full upon the beam. Then from the clipper’s rails they saw the Rosey’s deck planks wrinkle inward weakly, much like sodden paper; splinters showered about her, and the bow of the McGuire riding upward tilted her till the sea played free across the combing of the engine-room door.

“ Astern, Reddy ! ” spoke Haggin gayly through the tube. “ We’ve given the beggar his askin’, and let it go at that! ”

A wrench of parting timbers, a renewal of oaths and chiming bells, and the McGuire sagged back from the Rosey’s deck, her stub-nose battered beyond fancy, yet triumphant to the fullness of a leer. Staggered by the sight of all this desperation, her crew clung upon the hawser gratings, silent to a man, unknowing from what quarter doom would descend upon them next.

“Ye’ve a taste of your own kind, Denny O’Rourke ! ” called Haggin across the troubled sea. “ There ’s more waitin’, if ye want. Or have ye had enough, me man ? Shall it be quits for the while, I ’m askin’ ? ”

O’Rourke wagged a brawny fist across the water, his face drawn with hatred.

“ Ye ’ll pay for this wit’ yer license, Tim Haggin, and I 'll have yer life wit’ it, too.” Here words failed him in his frenzy, and he took to man-handling his crew. Curse followed curse then about the boat, and Haggin grinned in derision.

“ We '11 go home, Reddy, me boy. Will yer engynes stand up to it ?“

Only facts printed legibly in torn timbers and twisted steel interest the Steam Boiler Inspectors, who preside over channel destinies. Occasionally, in matters before them, they ask concerning the speed under way, the signals, and the temperate qualities of the pilot in charge ; otherwise they suit themselves in the written signs of disaster. The pilot of the Ah Soon stood up for Haggin at the hearing, but they took Tim’s license away. Before this O’Rourke spoke Simmons on the Front, and Simmons, after his kind, flawed round like a December gale.

“ You ’re a dangerous man, Haggin,” said he, “ and we ’ll part.”

“ It’s a good thing for both of us,” answered Haggin, “but a better thing for me. I ’ll be up for my time tonight, and there’s somethin’ owin’ for grub I’ve give the men.”

“ You ’ll pay it yourself, then, Haggin,” said Simmons. “D’yer think it’s a free coffee stand I’m running with the tugs ? ”

Haggin sat down on the oil locker in the engine room, and idly drummed his heels.

“ Reddy, I ’m out,” said he.

“ Well,” remarked Reddy promptly, “ ye don’t seem desperit-like. I’m leavin’, too. It ’s bad grub, hard hours, and worse engynes wit’ the fear of sudden death that we quit. Simmons — a curse to him — docked me too for our pleasure beyant, to the chune of one mont’s wages. What’s more, O’Rourke’s brother has the McGuire, and I’m dommed, says I, if I’ll work for a galley-jawin’, sojerin’ hoss of a brute the likes of him.”

“ I 'm that sorry, Reddy.”

“ You 'll not be that much sorry the price of a can of beer, Tim Haggin, and thanks to ye.”

Reddy grabbed up a wrench, and contemptuously tossed it clanging among the crank throws and rods of the McGuire’s tottering engines.

“ I ’ll fix them, too ! ” he snapped, a sudden wrath transfiguring his usually placid face. Recovering the discarded wrench, he fell upon the engine gear. " Here goes, Ned Simmons, for that much fun to the price of the wages you’ve stole.”

“ What’s up, Reddy ? ”

“ You put yer eye on me, Tim. I 'll spike the bally boat till she limps onelegged for Simmons — unh ! ” His wrench bit noisily on the metal. “ ’T is a bolt that clings faster nor Simmons to a dollar ! Unh ! ”

“ If ye ’ll be foolin’ wit’ the valve chest, Reddy Rogers,” cried Haggin swiftly, “ I’m away from here till ye ’re done ! Man, ye’ve not cut off the biler! Screw off the stame, there, ye idjit, or ye ‘11 blow us from here to Greenwood ! ”

Reddy, shamefaced hut determined, climbed across the engines to the main feed and screwed down the valve. Then he swung back to the head of the engine room, and called down to the fireman in the hold : “ Benny, are ye there ? Ay ? Thin git the divvil out of there, lad, and here’s the price of a mulligan.”

Benny sauntered shoreward, and with the wrench ringing in its work Reddy went at the valve. One by one he broke the grip of nut on bolt, and with desperate swiftness pried up the head of the valve.

“ Out of there, Tim! ” he cried, throwing down the wrench. Delving into the locker, he dragged out a ring of metal pipe, —a stray end from a boiler tube. “The chisel, — the chisel!” he panted in his haste, clawing through the waste cotton strewed about the locker. “ The chisel — ah ! there ye are.”

He laid the inch of tubing in the engine-hold vise, and with flying strokes of a hammer sheared it down one side. Then he pried it apart, smoothed off the burr, and raced back to the valve.

“ D’ ye see. Haggin ? ” he grunted over the head of the valve chest. “ Here’s the hand screw what lengthens the stride of the valve. D’ye see? Wit’it screwed up as far as she ’ll go, it makes the cranks go faster, — then ye ’re having yer speed. Wit’ it screwed down hard, she’s joggin’ slow-like, though all yer stame be turned adrift to her engynes. Ye’ve no understandin’ yet ? Dommit, man, yer that thick ! Sure, watch yer dad.”

Reddy lifted the steel cover till he could brace it open with a block. “ See that, ye muttonhead,” — this to Haggin. “ D’ ye see that screw what runs down from the hand wheel atop the chist ? D’ ye see this here biler - pipe piece ? Then, can ye putt two and two toget’er, or are ye that dumb wit’ yer sight ye ’ll never see t’roo a hawse pipe ? My mind, Tim Haggin ” —

“ Will ye be putting the piece in there, Reddy ? ” burst Haggin from his silence. He leaped from the locker lid, and clapped Reddy on the back.

The grimy engineer nodded gayly, and bent to the work again.

“ There, Tim Haggin, I’m doin’ no more than swagin’ this bit of jool’ry about the hand - wheel screw, inside where it’ll not be seen. D’ye twig? When the next divvil of a hard-driven oil swinger comes aboard, he ’ll have the Strength of a Herkles (Herkles ? I’m misminded if that be the name), but he ’ll have to be dommed stronger than the fist of mortal man can be to twist up the valve till she’s goin’ full speed, the McGuire.”

The hammer swung, the deed was done. The inch end of boiler pipe was driven, like a ring, about the threaded screw that keyed up the valve to speed. Then, with a stroke of the hammer again, the head of the chest clanged into place; with hastening fingers the nuts were screwed home upon the bolts ; and long before Benny the fireman came staggering back to the pier, half .seas over and roaring, the McGuire was a crippled craft.

The society of independent towboatmen, informally met as usual, hovered at the pier head. Denny O’Rourke, livid in triumph, had laid his taunt on Haggin.

“ I ’ve got yer license, ye sow-drivin’ lub of a lighterman,” said he, “ and me brother Petey’s got yer boat. And where are ye now, Mr. Haggin ? ”

“ Here, Denny O’Rourke, and wit’ these words in me mout’: Ye’ve got me license, and yer brother’s got me berth. It’s evil come to the both of ye, and there’s a curse in yer wake, O’Rourke. Mark me, I make no threats, but by the power of the saints above, me man, this day the year '11 see ye wit’out a boat, — ye or yer brother, — an’ beggin’ a license at that, Good-day to ye, Denny O’Rourke, and put that in yer pipe and smoke it.”

The crowd was silent; the big man rang a sneering laugh in answer.

Haggin, with his hands in his pockets, strolled down the pier giving one last fling at his foe : “Ye mind the words, Denny O’Rourke ! ”

Simmons was standing on the verge of the stringpiece, and his mind was not at peace.

“ What’s that ? ” he bellowed below. “ She ’ll not run above seven knot ? It’s a lie ! She’s been driv’ eleven point five. Don’t give me no talk like that, Petey O’Rourke. And you there, O’Brien: a fine figure of a man you are, hirin’ out at full wages, and can’t make no steam in her pipes ! What’s the pair of you for? Would you break a man, with your talk of dry docks and repairs? You’ll push ten knot out of that there McGuire, or the job’s for better men. You hear me ? ”

They heard. But it mattered little; Reddy’s jewelry had done the job. The McGuire dragged in her work, deader than if she were anchored to the flank of a grain ship laden below the taste of Plimsoll. In her daily rounds skippers swore at her lagging ; she was passed by all craft but the cotton lighters slouching along the pier line. O’Brien, her new engineer, had gone prospecting among crank throws and cylinder, seeking the source of trouble ; Petey O’Rourke, beside himself, suggesting possibilities from the feed pump up to the crown plate.

“Naw,” snapped O’Brien, “ g’ wan wit’ yer. The gauges show right; ’t ain’t in her biler at all, at all. It’s in the light of her blasted evil ways that’s doin’ it. I ’m minded to t row up the job.”

“ Don’t ye be doin’ that, Mike; don’t be doin’ that,” pleaded O’Rourke. “ Ye ’d not be lavin’ me in the lurch? ”

“ Mebbe the Sow’s overfat from the grub Simmons is givin’ her,” suggested a caller. He was a friend of Haggin’s.

O’Rourke swore.

“ The Sow ’s got the hog cholera; ’t is all she can do to walk,” remarked the man, going up the Front. He had worked on a cattle boat once, and was apt in terms.

Haggin heard, and grinned.

Summer passed, autumn treading upon its heels; winter crowded down into spring, and summer was on the harbor again, — all in the inevitable round of seasons. Haggin was deck hand on the Dora Swan of the Layman line, —still waiting, and with the year’s brand of the Steam Boiler Inspectors soon to pass from his name. In memory of old times, he really worked as first mate on the C. P. Layman, — a pilot to all purposes, — though without a license ; for friendship is even stronger than the arbitrary opinions of the men who see harbor life only from the roof of the Post Office.

“ In two days,” said he, “ I ’ll be a free man, wit’ me papers back agin. D’ ye mind that, Davy Brown ? ”

Brown nodded, and reached for the bell. As it struck below, the beat of the engines paused, while the tug slid softly heaving along the low ground swell.

“Number Fourteen coming in,” murmured Brown, pointing his pipestem toward a trim and shapely pilot boat stealing spectral down the head of the Main Ship Channel. The moonlight lay clear upon her drawing canvas, her hull dark and solemn below, one thin line of foam gushing under her forefoot. Her course lay across the Layman’s bow, but as she drew down toward the tug her helm flew up, and she luffed, lying head into the wind, with her white cloths slatting in the breeze.

“ Ahoy there, tug! ” came a hail across the seas.

“ Ay, ay ! ” cried Brown. “ Hello, Fourteen, what’s up ? ”

“ You ’ll be in a muss there ’fore long, friend. What boat’s that? ”

“ C. P. Layman. That you, Cap’n Wolff? ”

“ Hello, Davy. D’ ye know ye ’re lyin’ half on to the wreck of the Jackson ? You better be out of there. What do you draw ? ”

“ Twelve and a half full forward ; the tanks were filled to-day.”

“ Better pull out of there, — you ’re right on the Knoll now.”

“ What’s the odds, cap’n ? Can’t we carry twelve and a half anywhere on Flynns’s Knoll ? The charts ” —

“ Damn the charts ! ” came the emphatic answer. “ You can’t carry ten since the Umbria ripped up the coal barge, last night. Half the Jackson’s stem tilted upward when they got the Cunarder off. You better get out of there.”

“ So ? Right ye are, then, cap’n, — thanks. How’s trade?”

“ Bad, — unreasonable bad. Goodnight, Davy,” and with her helm eased off, Number Fourteen made one short board into the channel edge, then flew about and stood on her way to Staten Island.

“ Sore thing on poor old Thompson,” said Haggin, speaking of the Umbria’s pilot. “ They say he was telling of the Jackson a short hour afore he ripped the Umbria hard through her middle. It ’ll go hard wit’ the ole felly, and him one of the best in the trade.”

“Yep — ten feet, humph!” spoke Brown. “ I sure thought that the contractor had put dynamite to the wreck. It’s high time ’t was done.”

Caldwell, owner of the Layman line, came down to the pier and swung aboard the tug.

“ Where’s Haggin ? ” he asked.

“Here, sir,” answered Tim. “Mornin’ to ye.”

Caldwell nodded him aft to the stern gratings, and Tim followed, wondering.

“ Haggin, what’s the worth of the McGuire ? ”

“ As she is ? Sure, the price of old junk.”

“ No, I know that; but can they make a boat of her for less than the price of a new one ?”

“ Sure, sir, easy. Reddy Rogers, what ran her wit’ me, says two thousand 'll do it. He says she’s not so bad ; the trouble was she was slung together. Them’s standard engynes, but they was no more than pitched into her hull.”

“ But I hear she can make no better than eight knots, pushed.”

Haggin tittered. “It’s a joke,” he answered. “ She’s good for ten. Reddy Rogers put it up agin Simmons for the money he’d docked him. Was Simmons not that mean to be spendin’ the price of repairs, he’d long ago found out.”

“ How’s that, Tim ? ”

Haggin told in detail how Reddy had swaged the pipe about the hand screw in the valve chest, a job so deft that for a full year none had found out or even suspected. Caldwell roared with delight.

“ I can see a joke, for one,” he ended with, “ though it is upon the owners. You ’re a sly lot, you boys.”

Haggin looked deprecatory. “ Not that, sir, but we was driven hard. Ye ’ll know the kind of Simmons ? ”

“ Yes, there’s better that go to church. See here, Haggin, I ’ve concluded to buy the McGuire. Simmons paid four thousand when he bought her, hey? ”

“ It was more than stealin’, sir. It was politics.”

Caldwell nodded. “ I know, but he’s got little good for it. He’s offered the McGuire at the price he paid, and, Tim, I’m going to buy her in, overhaul her fore and aft, and put you aboard, my lad.”

“Sure, sir,” answered Haggin, “I’ll ask a prayer for ye. And where is young Petey O’Rourke ? ”

“ Simmons fired him yesterday. Eight knots was the best he could do, — he and O’Brien, — seeing that Reddy’s jewelry was mixed up in her machines.”

“ I’m minded, sir, there,” murmured Haggin, “ that half of me corse ’s come true.”

“ Bosh, Tim. you ’re foolish. A curse is no more useful than a Dutch hand with the lines. Will you tell Captain Davy that the schooner is waiting at Dow’s ? ”

They dropped the Layman’s tow, late that night, off the end of the Hook, and turned westward toward home.

“There’s your friend, Tim,” called Davy down to the forward bitts, where Haggin was hove to at ease. “ D’ ye see her, the dog, astern?” Beyond was the Annie Rosey swaggering along in their wake, like them bound up the channel, homeward.

Haggin stepped down for a look at the following tug, and returned, climbing swiftly aloft to the wheel.

“ I say, Davy, there’s Denny O’Rourke behint.”

“ I told you myself,” answered Davy. “ What ’s that to come tellin’ a mail ? ”

“ Davy, d’ ye mind poor Dan Sweezey that O’Rourke sent to the hospital ? ”

Brown looked about in wonder.

“ Do I, — damn him ! — do I remember ? Yes.”

“ Are ye minded, Davy, of the time Denny O’Rourke crowded ye agin the bulkhead in the gap at Atlantic Basin ? It near cost ye yer boat, Davy.”

“ Tim Haggin, am I a dummy to forget? And what the devil is in your mind that you ’re tellin’ me these things?”

“ Denny O’Rourke is behint us, Davy,” said Haggin, gripping him by the arm. “ He’s there on the port quarter, and ye ’ll not forgit what Wolff was warnin’ us, last night, by Flynns’s Knoll.”

Brown gaped across his shoulder at the white-faced man behind him, who lifted a hand for silence.

“ Hold on, Davy, — one minute. Ye ’ll mind young Billy, yer brother. D ye mind the night he cruel beat him in Dutch John’s of Coenties Hook ? ”

Wrathful in the memory, Brown hurled the wheel about till the Layman slewed across her course. As wrathfully, he dragged her back to the channel way, and turned on the man behind him.

“ The devil’s in you, Tim Haggin ; take the wheel. I’m goin’ below.”

Haggin seized the wheel, blindly groping for the bell beneath his hand. As Brown stamped down the companion ladder, the gong clanged in the engine hold, while the boat’s gait dropped to half speed. Astern, the Rosey came swinging up the channel; it was growing late, and Denny O’Rourke was crowding on all steam, to get home to his bed in South Brooklyn.

“ Ahoy, there ! ” called Haggin, as the Rosey came into hail.

“ Ay, — what’s ailin’ yer ? ” a rasping voice returned.

“ Good - evenin’ to yer, Denny O’Rourke, and is Petey doin’ well?”

Silence; then an oath ripped angrily across the heaving sea.

“ Ye ’re not happy, Mister O’Rourke ; they have took Petey’s berth away. Could he steer as well as he can steal, — or you, blister O’Rourke, — there would be better money betwane ye.”

The Annie Rosey ranged swiftly upward toward the taunter. The bell rang in the Layman’s hold, and the screw thumped full speed again.

“ Tim Haggin, I ’ve marked yer voice!” cried O’Rourke. “There’s a pair of black eyes and a broken head waitin’ for ye, me friend, when I meet ye beyant. Ye swine, would ye talk to honest men ? ”

Haggin looked forward in the course, ranging the channel lights together. The Elm Tree Beacon ahead and the Hook light astern gave him the lay across the lighted lane of Gedney’s. ’With one eye, then, upon the tug astern, he crowded the wheel over, and bore slantwise toward the sunken wreck.

“ Ye “re a thief. Denny O’Rourke! Would ye come aboard, now, I’d set the brand upon ye.”

At the high words the crews of the two racing tugs pushed to the rails.

“Ye’re a chokin’ coward, Denny O’Rourke! ” roared Haggin, in one last volley of abuse. Then in a lower tone to the deck hands aft, “ Watch, now, boys, for what’s comin’.”

There rose a rush of steam from the Annie Rosey’s pipes, and the clatter of her engines beat high-stroked upon the night.

“ Below there, Finnegan ! ” yelled Denny O’Rourke, and they saw the mate go scrambling up the ladder. Haggin grinned, leaning from the pilot-house window with one hand upon the wheel.

“It’s me, O’Rourke, — Tim Haggin ! ” he cried, a scornful taunt in the tone. “ Can ye see, or have ye lost thim glasses ye stole the year agone from the Dutch tank down the Kills ? ”

A black hulk shot down the Rosey’s companion wav, and Denny O’Rourke, one foot on the rail, roared oath upon oath across the wash between. “ I ’ll be there to ye, Tim Haggin ! Hard down, Finnegan ! ” They were drawing perilously near, the wake of the Layman drowning the other to the decks. Foot by foot she edged the Rosey inward, always toward that sinister trap, the wreck of the Jackson beyond. Haggin shot a glance ahead, marked the place, and bore down on the wheel.

“ Crowd her on,” he dinned down the tube to the engine room. “ They 'll do best to take it hard on.”

The Rosey sheered aside, a bare rod of wake between them.

“ Ye ’ll not be raminin’ tugs these days, eh, Denny O’Rourke ? ” This with a gibing laugh. “ Have ye lost heart, ye thievin’ coward ? ”

“ Till I get aboard, Tim Haggin, ye ’ll live, — no longer ! ” threatened Denny O’Rourke, beating the air with his fists. “ Ye — ye — ahr ! ” Rage overcame him; his words died on his lips. For once the horrid fluency of his accustomed profanity forsook the man. He shook his fists, baresark in madness, in his rage roaring with inarticulate cries.

The passion, the venom of the two, hurling, high-voiced, the hatred of years, spread to the crews. They laughed and jeered, like masters in the affray. Haggin looked ahead again ; then he turned the wheel to starboard.

“ One length ! ” he roared. “ There, men, look at that! ”

A sudden grunt, a muffled outcry of rending wood ; then, uprearing on the sea. the Annie Rosey plunged into the wreck. For one instant she hung suspended ; they saw her tall stack totter like a stricken man ; over it went, bursting down the pilot house as it fell. Noise followed noise ; she tore her way upward on the black oak timbers lying beneath her keel, and a volley of vapor poured from the hold. Still, with the weight of momentum she pressed onward across that abatis beneath her, the cry of breaking timbers speaking shrilly through the hoarse clamor of escaping steam. Then she brought to, her screw, still beating, half revealed ; her men clinging, cursing as they fell, to stanchion, bitt, and rail.

“ Wit’ the compliments of Tim Haggin ! ” cried the man, beating the wood beneath his hand.

A sea heaved up under the wrecked Rosey ; she lurched forward, and slipped from the support beneath. The fallen stack rolled clanking across the deck house, and the fireman, plunging from below, leaped across the deck into the sea.

“ Pick him up, there ! ” yelled Haggin, and a line was thrown to the swimming man. The Rosey, rolling to and fro, dipped stern under, and a stout hand pushed Haggin from the Layman’s wheel.

“ It’s a night’s work to be forgotten, Tim,” muttered Davy Brown. “ You get below and haul them deck hands aboard.”

Cry fell upon cry in the wreck. Her men rushed forward, striving to escape the sea. The whistle cord, by some mischance tangled in the smokestack stays, twitched with every roll of the sea, and hoarse, half-choked blasts came hooting from her twisted pipe.

“ Ahoy ! Hello, Davy Brown, what’s the row ? ” a voice hailed them beyond the uproar, and the Layman’s sister boat, the Caldwell, ranged beside.

“ Nothin’ much,” answered Davy. “ Denny O’Rourke’s gone piling up on the Jackson, and serve him good and right.”

The Caldwell nosed inquiringly into the wreck, and one by one, Denny O’Rourke in the lead, the Rosey’s crew crawled aboard. Then, with her lights still burning, the tug lurched over on her side, slid from the last grip of the wreck below, and, with a gasp of drowning steam, sank bubbling to the bottom.

“ I’m minded now,” said Haggin, unsetting his rigid jaw, “ that most of me curse’s come true.”

Maximilian Foster.