“I was doin’ bully till a cobble-stone bounced into the engine room, makin’ a billiard with my off knee, then I got kind of peevish.

“Rush Street Bridge is the last one, and they’d massed there on both sides, like fleas on a razorback.  Thinks I, ’If we make it through here, we’ve busted the strike,’ and I glances back at the ‘Detroit’ just in time to see her crew pullin’ their captain into the deck house, limp and bleedin’.  The barricade was all knocked to pieces and they’d flunked absolute.  Don’t blame ’em much either, as it was sure death to stand out in the open under the rain of stuff that come from the bridges.  Of course with no steerin’ she commenced to swing off.

“I jumps out the far side of the engine room and yells fit to bust my throat.

“‘Grab that wheel!  Grab it quick—­we’ll hit the bridge,’ but it was like deef and dumb talk in a boiler shop, while a wilder howl went up from the water front as they seen what they’d done and smelled victory.  There’s an awfulness about the voice of a blood-maddened club-swingin’ mob; it lifts your scalp like a fright wig, particularly if you are the clubee.

“‘We’ve got one chance,’ thinks I, ’but if she strikes we’re gone.  They’ll swamp us sure, and all the police in Cook County won’t save enough for to hold services on.’  Then I throwed a look at the opening ahead and the pessimisms froze in me.

“I forgot all about the resiliency of brickbats and the table manners of riots, for there, on top of a bunch of spiles, ca’m, masterful and bloated with perjuries, was Oily Heegan dictatin’ the disposition of his forces, the light of victory in his shifty, little eyes.

“‘Ten dollars and costs,’ I shrieks, seein’ red.  ’Lemme crawl up them spiles to you.’

“Then inspiration seized me.  My soul riz up and grappled with the crisis, for right under my mit, coiled, suggestive and pleadin’, was one of the tug’s heavin’ lines, ’bout a three-eighths size.  I slips a runnin’ knot in the end and divides the coils, crouchin’ behind the deck-house till we come abeam of him, then I straightened, give it a swinging heave, and the noose sailed up and settled over him fine and daisy.

“I jerked back, and Oily Heegan did a high dive from Rush Street that was a geometrical joy.  He hit kind of amateurish, doin’ what we used to call a ‘belly-buster’ back home, but quite satisfyin’ for a maiden effort, and I reeled him in astern.

“Your Chicago man ain’t a gamey fish.  He come up tame and squirting sewage like a dissolute porpoise, while I played him out where he’d get the thrash of the propeller.

“‘Help,’ he yells, ‘I’m a drownding.’

“‘Ten dollars and costs,” says I, lettin’ him under again.  ’Do you know who you’re drinkin’ with this time, hey?’

“I reckon the astonishment of the mob was equal to Heegan’s; anyhow I’m told that we was favoured with such quietness that my voice sounded four blocks, simply achin’ with satisfactions.  Then pandemonium tore loose, but I was so engrosed in sweet converse I never heard it or noticed that the ‘Detroit’ had slid through the draw by a hair, and we was bound for the blue and smilin’ lake.