CHAPTER XVIII

IN A FIERY RAIN

Steve Rush did not know what a hang-over might be. He had just had a practical demonstration of what a flareback was. This, however, he did not know was caused by an explosion of the molten metal, either from a stream of water touching it or a too sudden inrush of cool air. At any rate the metal in the furnace, just as the dolly was driven in, had suffered a partial explosion. The air was full of molten metal shooting in all directions. Some of the men back of where the monkey-man had been standing had been quite seriously burned in the explosion.

Steve, seeing three of them flattened on the platform, dashed in at the risk of his own life, dragging the men to positions of safety.

"Get under cover!" bellowed Pig-Iron. "Don't you know there's a hang-over?"

"What's a hang-over--what am I to look out for?" shouted Steve.

"That's an explosion at the top caused by a stoppage of the vents in the charge," explained Peel, as the two hurriedly crawled in under one of the huge heating stoves. "It'll be raining coke here, in a minute, till you can't see ten feet ahead of you."

"An--an explosion at the top of the furnace, do you say?" gasped Rush.

"Yes. The whole business is blowing out of the top. Don't you hear it coming?"

The fiery rain of coke and ore had begun. It sounded like the roar of an approaching storm as it beat on the metal sides of the big stoves.

"But Jarvis is up there!" cried the Iron Boy, beginning to crawl from under the protecting stove.

"No, he ain't. Come back! You'll be killed. Why, you wouldn't stand any more show in that coke shower than you would to stand up under hot fire in battle, and perhaps not so much. Fellers do git through a battle without being hit. Nobody ever was in a coke shower who didn't git more or less hit, principally more."

"I tell you, Bob is up there. I must go----"

"No, he ain't."

"He isn't? Then where is he?"

"Oh, he got blowed off when the explosion--when the hang-over----"

"Blown off?"

"Sure. He couldn't hang on in a hang-over, could he?"

Rush groaned. He ventured to peer from under the stove, up into the air. The top of the furnace was a volcano in full eruption. Fire, smoke and coke were belching high up into the air, there spreading out like a great umbrella and raining down over a wide area.

Pig-Iron reached out a hand, jerking Steve roughly back.

"Don't be a fool!" he growled.

"Do--do you think Jarvis is killed?"

"Most likely. Ought to be, if he isn't after getting that dose."

All at once Rush broke away from the head melter, darted to the iron ladder, and, regardless of the rain of coke, began running up the ladder. The boy got blow upon blow over head and shoulders, as the stuff beat down upon him, but he kept his head down and pluckily kept on up the ladder.

"Come back!" roared Pig-Iron, darting from cover at the risk of his life. But Steve was too far up the ladder to be seen from below. The head melter again bellowed his command to Rush to return.

In the meantime the boy had reached the top. Jarvis was not there. Steve cried out to him, but there was no response. With a catch in his breath, Rush turned and slid down the ladder to the base of the furnace. His head was cut and bleeding from the flying coke, and his shoulders were wounded in many different places.

Steve staggered rather than walked over to the stove where he dropped down.

"Well, he ain't there, is he?" demanded Pig-Iron.

"No; he isn't there. Where--where do you think he is?"

"Most likely out in the yard somewhere. As soon as this black shower is over we'll go look for him. He's done for. Too bad, but them things will happen."

"I don't believe it!" answered the Iron Boy explosively. "It will take more than a hang-over to kill Bob Jarvis. You'll find he is all right. But, if that is so, I don't understand why he did not answer me when I called."

"I told you so. No use to cry over spilled coke. We'll pick him up pretty quick."

"There, the shower is letting up. Shall we go, now?" demanded Steve impatiently.

The melter stretched forth a hand, drawing it back quickly.

"Not yet! I don't propose to get my head cracked just for the sake of being in a hurry."

"Well, I am going, whether you are or not."

Rush crawled from under the stove and straightened up. The metal was still running from the furnace, most of it having spilled off into the yard, for instantly the hang-over occurred the train crew had fled. They knew full well what was coming, and every man of them instantly took to cover. The metal ran over the first ladle. Instantly the car under the ladle caught fire. In a few minutes the whole train was on fire. The engineer, who had deserted his post with the rest of them, rushed back at the risk of his life, uncoupled his engine and started it away, thus saving the engine from being seriously damaged.

Rush raised his voice in a long shout for his companion.

"Bo-o-b! O-h-h-h, Bob!"

"Hi, hi, catch me down there!" howled a voice from the air. It sounded right over the head of Steve Rush.

Pig-Iron Peel heard it, too, and darted out. The two men glanced up into the air. They saw a human form shooting down one of the wire braces that extended up to the top of the stove to steady the metal chimney around which there was a network of the wires.

"It's Bob!" howled Rush beside himself with joy. "Help me catch him."

It _was_ Bob, and he was descending at a rate of speed altogether too fast for either comfort or safety.

Steve leaped over to where the lower end of the guy-wire was anchored and braced himself to meet the shock. Peel sprang behind him.

Illustration: "It's Bob!" Cried Steve.

"Steady, now!" warned the melter.

"I'll catch you, Bob."

"Look out!" howled Jarvis.

His body seemed to leap from the wire. It landed against Steve Rush with the force of a catapult. Steve went over like a ninepin. Behind him Pig-Iron Peel shared the same fate, and in an instant the three were in a tangle.

Jarvis was the first to extricate himself. He leaped to his feet and began dancing about, howling lustily.

"What kind of a game is this that you've put me up against?" he yelled.

The boy, with arms and legs wrapped around the guy wire, had shot down from the top of the stove. He was angry all through, more angry than scared or even hurt.

"What kind of a game is it, I say?"

Rush and Pig-Iron were too busy picking themselves up from the floor where Jarvis's bump had landed them, to make reply.

"What's the matter with you fellows? Did I bowl you over? Well, it serves you right if I did."

"Bob," laughed Steve getting to his feet, "I knew nothing could do you up. You're too tough to be very badly hurt. What happened to you up there?"

"That's what I've come down here to find out. What happened down here? Was it an earthquake, or something of the sort?"

"Something like that. Mr. Peel called it a hang-over up at your end."

"Hang-over? Pshaw! It was a fall-over, so far as I was concerned."

"How'd you git on that guy-wire?" demanded Peel, breaking into the conversation at this juncture. "The head of that is more'n twenty feet from where you were working?"

"I took the air-line route," grinned Jarvis.

"Tell us what happened?" urged Steve.

"I was working over the top. Something all of a sudden went wrong, and there didn't seem to be any smoke or anything coming out. I got up on the edge of the crater----"

"You mean the furnace?"

"I mean what I said. It was a crater, and don't you forget it--a real, live crater. You'd have thought so if you had seen it spit fire and lava. Well, about the time I got up on the edge, pouf! slam, bang! The whole insides of the volcano popped up in my face. I must have fallen over in, for the eruption lifted me right out again. I did another aviation act. I spread my planes and sailed through the air----"

"Was that--no, of course not. Where were you all the time from the explosion to just now, when you came down on the wire?"

"I was roosting on that flange up there near the top of the stove."

"What? Thrown way over there?" exclaimed Steve.

"No; didn't I tell you I flew again? I'm getting to be an expert. First I flew over in the open-hearth building and landed on a girder. This time I tried a more ambitious flight, landing on a hot stove. All the stuff from the eruption fell down on me and woke me up after a little. I nearly fell off trying to reach the guy-wire that I knew was there. You know the rest. I took a slide down the wire that would have made a Japanese performer turn pale. Then you and I had a collision."

"Well," laughed Steve, "it's all over now, you can get back to work."

"What? Up there again?"

"Of course."

"No, siree! Not for Robert Jarvis. He knows when he has had enough. He can get into enough trouble right down here on the ground floor. He doesn't have to perch on the edge of a crater looking for trouble. Did anything happen down here?"

"What did happen?" questioned Steve, turning to the head melter.

"Flare-back and----"

"What caused it?"

"I don't rightly know--"

"I know that your man on the rear end of the dolly nearly put an end to me by that last blow he struck with the mall. Whatever possessed him to do it!"

"He must have misunderstood you. That was a close call. Did the juice burn you?"

"It scorched my cheek a little as it went by," laughed Rush.

"What's that? Did you get singed again?" demanded Jarvis.

"Yes; a little. But we must expect those things in the steel mills."

"Hello, what's the matter over there?" cried Bob, running to the edge of the platform and looking down at the burning cars of the hot metal train.

Pig-Iron explained that a flare-back had flooded the place with molten metal, setting everything inflammable on fire.

The front of the furnace had been blown out and the platform was littered with debris, brick, sheet-iron, metal that was still glowing and which would continue to glow for hours before it became cold and gray. The place looked a wreck, though conditions were not nearly as bad as appeared to the inexperienced eye. There was little that could be done to clear away until the metal had cooled.

In the meantime, the head melter had sent one of his men to make a report of the occurrence to the superintendent of that division.

"We will move over to number three. That is nearly ready to tap," announced Peel.

"If you don't mind I should like to ask a question or so before we start in," said Steve.

"Sure thing. What is it?"

"Did you see who was handling the mall when the dolly was hit that hard blow that did the business?"

"No. Why?"

"I should like to know."

"We will find out mighty quick. Say, you fellows over there, who was plugging the dolly?"

"Don't know," answered a voice.

"It was the relief man, Kalinski," answered another.