CHAPTER XIV

BY THE ROARING FURNACES

In the daytime a row of tall black, cone-shaped chimneys might be seen across the river from the mills themselves. At night these chimneys were pyramids of yellow and red fire.

These were the blast furnaces. In them, the ore, as it came from the mines far away on the Minnesota iron ranges, was reduced to pig or pig iron, by smelting at a temperature of fifteen hundred degrees centigrade--about twenty-seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. This great temperature boils the slag or impurities out of the metal, and after it has been drawn off into ladles it becomes "pig."

From the blast furnaces the pig, red-hot in its molds, is conveyed to the open-hearth furnaces, where it is subjected to a still further boiling process at the same temperature as before, and then it is steel. Steel is pig-iron combined with carbon and with the impurities boiled out.

It was to the blast furnaces that the Iron Boys were assigned, and they were to take the night trick. As they made their way that night through the yards of the mill, where engines were shrieking their warnings, cars were thundering here and there, long trains of red-hot metal rumbling over the hot metal bridge from the blast furnaces to the mills, while the flames were leaping skyward from the blast furnaces, Steve halted for a moment to gaze on the scene. Neither boy ever had been in the yards after dark, and the scene was one never to be forgotten.

"Which furnace do we work in?" wondered Bob.

"Number four, I believe."

"Then that must be the fourth one."

"Naturally it wouldn't be the fifth," answered Steve, with a laugh.

They hurried across the bridge, for it was already time they were reporting to the head melter at the furnace, and being late meant being docked, for there is no sentiment in the steel mills. Every man was expected to do his full duty and a little more. Most of them did the latter.

A scene of activity and apparent confusion met their gaze as they neared the towering blast furnaces with their heating stoves sixty feet high on either side of them.

Men with barrows were rushing about, bells clanged as the charge was ready to hoist on the top of the furnace to be dumped into its never-satisfied mouth. The ore was carried up by another skip. Through the stoves roared a gas flame, leaping, licking, here and there reaching out a forked tongue as though in search of fresh prey. The odor of gas was well-nigh overpowering to the Iron Boys, for they were not used to it.

The head melter, standing close up against the furnace, clad in a rubber coat and wearing green goggles, was peering into the furnace through a peep hole, while a stream of water from a hose was constantly played over his body. His face seemed to rest almost against the plates, and the bosh on which he was standing was so hot that the steam rose in a cloud about him.

Two men were inserting the prodding rod against the dolmite that plugged the ore hole near the bottom of the furnace. The perspiration was running in rivers down their half-naked bodies.

"The drill! The drill!" shouted a choking voice.

A compressed air drill was brought, a dolly-rod inserted, and then the dolmite was drilled to a thin shell.

"Stand back!" warned the head melter in a hoarse voice.

"I reckon something is going to happen," cried Jarvis in his companion's ear. The roar of the furnaces and the gas in the huge stoves made his voice sound weak and far away.

Steve moved back a little, pulling Jarvis after him. Flush with the edge of a raised platform of fire-brick and steel, over which extended little gutters packed with sand, stood a string of flat cars each holding an immense ladle. The gutters led directly into these ladles.

"That is where the iron goes, through those gutters and into the ladles," explained Rush. "It runs like water, though I have never seen them make a cast."

Just then a warning cry sounded as the dolly broke through the clay dam that holds the metal in the furnace.

Fire, scorching, burning fire leaped from the opening made with the dolly. The air was filled with brilliant, hissing stars as large as the palm of a man's hand. Some whirled like pin-wheels; others, holding their perfect shape, described graceful curves in the air, or exploded.

Men shaded their eyes, drew themselves together, and tried to shrink away from the terrific heat. But there was no avoiding it. The monkey-man who had broken through the clay dam staggered away from the opening thus made, shouting hoarsely for water.

Following the explosive stars, a river, almost blood-red, burst from the furnace with a roar, quickly changing into a river of saffron. Hissing and snapping the molten metal burned its way along through the sand-packed gutters, and shot from the ends of the gutters and into the waiting ladles on the flat cars at the foot of the platform. Everywhere the air seemed filled with fiery shapes reaching for human prey. Under foot there was danger on every hand, for a single misstep would plunge one into this all-consuming flood. The slag, or as much of it as possible, ground its way much more slowly, along another channel, to be gathered up and used over for other purposes at some later day.

As one ladle was filled the waiting train would move up, bringing a new set of cars under the ends of the gutters, and when at last all the cars had been loaded the train moved off, the ladles glowing in the darkness of the night, until in the distance they became mere eyes of fire.

The Iron Boys drew a deep sigh as the operation was concluded. Four hours would elapse before another cast would be made from number four furnace, but here and there along the row of huge cones stars were bursting, streams of hot, yellow lava flowing and men shouting, snarling or begging for water.

"It is terrible, yet grand!" exclaimed Steve Rush, wiping the perspiration from his brow. Even where they stood, at one side of the furnace, the heat was well-nigh unbearable.

"It strikes me as being grandly hot," answered Jarvis. "Whew, a fellow doesn't need his winter underclothing on in this job, does he?"

"The furnace men don't seem to wear any at all," laughed Rush. "I should think they would burn their skin off. I don't know whether I can stand this game or not, but I'll try it. I wonder what we are going to do?"

"I will find out from the foreman."

The foreman was not on hand at the moment, but the head melter, known under the name of Pig-Iron Peel, had received orders regarding the Iron Boys.

He motioned them to approach, when a furnace hand told him who they were. He asked the name of each boy in a hoarse, gruff voice.

"Who are you?" demanded Jarvis.

"I'm the Pig," answered the melter, his red face wrinkling into a grin, which was quickly smoothed out as if the effort hurt him.

"Pig-Iron Peel," he added.

"Ho, ho!" roared Bob immoderately.

Steve nudged him to be quiet.

"We are ready to work if you will tell us what to do," said Rush.

"You can pack the sand gutters after the charge is loaded into the ladles. Either of you ever worked on a furnace before?"

"No, sir," answered the boys.

"You, what's your name----?"

"Jarvis."

"Well, Jarvis, I'll put you up on the charging platform. You won't have much to do there----"

"Where is the charging platform?" interrupted Bob.

"At the top of the furnace, fifty feet up there in the air. How do you like it?"

"Fine!" answered Jarvis, though without his usual enthusiasm. "What am I do when I get there?"

"Dump the charges into the furnace. The skips you have nothing to do with, except to ring a bell when you are ready for them. They will dump four loads of red ore into the furnace; then you throw in a layer of coke and limestone, the latter being called 'flux.' This makes what we call the charge. Is that clear?"

"Yes. What do I do then?"

"You do it all over again and you keep doing it until another man comes to take the job off your hands."

"How do I get up there?"

"Climb the ladder."

"Huh! Lucky for me I'm on the night trick, so I can't see, or I'd surely fall off."

"Rush, the sand man will show you about the troughs. Jarvis, you hike upstairs. Tell the man I have up there that you are to relieve him. He will show you about operating the levers. Have him put in a charge while you look on."

"Is there any light up there, so I can see what I am doing?"

"You will have light enough," grinned Pig-Iron Peel. "You won't have any reason to complain about either light or heat. This charging business is a continuous performance day and night, until the furnaces have to be shut down for cleaning. For your information I will tell you that the iron, being the heaviest, sinks to the bottom of the furnace as it is melted. The cinders trickle down after it, forming what is called the heart. The latter are tapped off every two hours, the iron every four hours. If you are going to be furnace men you will want to know all these things at the start."

"Thank you for the information. It is all very interesting," answered Steve.

"And very hot," added Jarvis. "With your permission I'll go aloft now, sir."

"Go on, and look sharp that you don't fall off," warned the head melter.

"I'll cling to the sheets, sir."

Bob, after the ladder bad been pointed out to him, began to climb. He had not gone far before he discovered that the rungs of the iron ladder were hot. They were so much so that he yelled, "ouch!" removing first one hand and then the other to rub it on his trousers. He was unable to keep both hands on the ladder for any great length of time.

Bob began to growl, and he kept up his growling all the way up the fifty-foot ladder. Finally he decided he must have gone about a hundred feet, instead of fifty and halting he shouted, "Hello!"

"Hello, yourself," answered a gruff voice from the cloud above. "What do you want?"

"It isn't a question of what I want, but rather what I am going to get. Are you the feeder?"

"I'm charging, if that's what you mean."

"Well, if you don't charge too much I'll come up and be shown," laughed the irrepressible Bob.

"Quit that fooling or I'll throw a bag of coke down on you."

Bob ran nimbly up the rest of the ladder, and a moment later stood facing a soot-covered fellow of about his own age.

"Say, did you mean that about the coke?"

"You'll find out whether I did or not, if----"

"Look here, pard, if you get funny I'll put you in with the coke and the--the limestone. I'll bet they'd never get the impurities out of the iron after you once got in it. It would be pig forever afterwards. Ha, ha! How's that?"

"You're too fresh, that's what's the matter with you," growled the charging boy. "Git busy here; I'm going down. I don't belong up here anyway, and I'm glad of it."

"Don't say that," protested Jarvis, with mock seriousness. "It is a matter of sincere regret to me that this isn't your regular job. I'd just as lief be down on the ground carrying water, as up here feeding the mouth of the furnace. The boss monkey down below said you were to show me what to do."

With a grunt of disapproval the charging boy instructed Jarvis in his duties, then with a "so-long," hurried down the ladder, leaving the Iron Boy alone in his glory.

Bob glanced about him curiously. Directly over his head, it seemed, flared the flames from the huge stove. Every now and then the great flame would swoop down a fiery tongue as if bent upon lapping him up. Bob instinctively ducked as the breeze carried the flame down toward him. He believed that a gust of wind would surely bring the flame on him, which he was certain would be the end of Bob Jarvis.

Off to the right and to the left of him were other swaying pillars of fire from the stoves of the other furnaces, and over on the opposite side of the river black smoke and red fire poured from the funnels of the open-hearth furnaces there. Bob himself was enveloped in a dense cloud of suffocating smoke, which, breathed into his lungs, set him coughing and choking.

"I wish I had stayed fired!" he muttered. "This is worse than the cinder pits."

Time passed quickly, however, and between watching the skiploads of ore as they shot up to him with disconcerting suddenness, and dodging the flames from the number four stove, Jarvis was kept reasonably busy.

Down below Steve, on hands and knees, was patting the sand in the gutters into place, smoothing it off so that there should be no projections to catch and retard the flow of the hot metal when the next cast was made. He found Pig-Iron Peel, despite his rough appearance, to be a kind-hearted man. This was a distinct relief after the experience of the lads in the cinder pits under two bosses who had lost no opportunity to do them harm. Now and then the head melter would step over to instruct the Iron Boy in his duties, and even at the distance from the furnace that Steve was working the heat was well-nigh unbearable. He was obliged to make frequent trips to the water barrel, and now and then he showered himself from head to foot with the ready hose. The skin was peeling from his face and his work clothes were burned through in many places.

"Stand by for the tap!" commanded Peel.

Rush was so busy that he did not hear the command. He did hear the tap, tap of the mall as it drove against the prodding rod, but this held no special significance for him. In the darkness preceding the cast the others did not observe him.

Suddenly, with a roar, the saffron flood burst through the clay dam. Millions of hissing stars leaped into the air and a river of molten metal swooped down on Steve Rush in its all-consuming flight.