The feet of the men at work over the burning hold were blistering.  Dan yanked out an inch hose and set a cabin boy to sluicing the deck where they stood, sending up dense clouds of enveloping steam.  A broad tongue of blue flame curled out of the port hawse-hole, licked along the half-protruding anchor, rose above the rail, and then burst into a puff of red fire which floated away in the wind.  A cargo port door warped in the heat, buckled outward, tearing plates and rivets with a rasping screech, and dropped hissing into the black waters; and the wind, blowing from astern, was sucked into the opening, fanning the flames to screaming ferocity.

The tale was plain for every one, and Dan read it to the last word.  Water would be of more service elsewhere, that was certain.  So he withdrew the four crews from their hose vents, ordered two of them to take their lines into the second hold, and set the others flooding the deck.  He shifted two of his seven-inch steam lines to the midship plugs, and then followed the hose men, who had joined their comrades in the darkness of the second hold.  Streams of water were hissing against the steel barrier and flying back at the faces of the nozzle men in hot spray.

“There’s a bulge in the centre,” reported the second officer.

“Yes,” said Dan, who seized a lantern and held it above his head, pointing out new objective marks for the water.  The smoke had grown thicker.  One man gagged at a nozzle; but drinking from the pipe the air which the water brought, he lowered his head and fought on.

They fought as men should fight, in the pungent half-gloom, colliding or falling prone as the vessel pitched, eyes fixed straight ahead, following the powerful silver lines of water which ribbed the dark and splashed against the steaming steel; white-yellow smoke spirals writhed about their heads like some grotesque saraband; coatless, shirtless, their streaked, sweating bodies gleamed dull and ghastly.

One of them straightened from the nozzle and glared at his side partner; and Dan, whose eyes were everywhere, saw him and moved close to him, where his fist could do best work if necessary.  Any sign of mutiny now called for decided measures.

“Say, Mike,” said the man in a rich brogue, “give us a hunk o’ yer ‘bacca—­this makes the mout’ dry”; and Dan chuckled his admiration for the fighting spirit of the Irish.

Once a tiny lance of flame leaped out through some hidden crevice—­leaped far out at the men as a rifle spits its deadly fire, and then, curling about a sugar sack like a serpent’s tongue, withdrew so suddenly, so silently, that it seemed to those who saw it as something which had flashed through their imaginations.  A stream of water sought the outlet and the flame came no more then.