The Iron Boys in the Steel Mills Part 30

"Isn't it about time we made a cast? The ore smells to me as if it were about ready."

Pig-Iron sniffed the air with a snort.

"Get ready for a cast!" he bellowed. "Boy, you'll do. You've got the nose that smells, you have. Heave up that dolly bar. How's them gutters?

You, Kalinski, there, see that slag trough is open. Bud, get your cinder-ladle ready. Come, now, the whole bunch of you is half-asleep.

Anybody'd think you'd been out to a party all day long. Come, Rush!"

"I am here, sir."

"Git that dolly against the furnace dam, and get ready to jump when things are hot enough."

"I will jump, never you fear," answered Steve laughing.

The Iron Boy turned his back to the men and placed the dolly bar against the clay dam after facing the glaring heat at close range long enough to place the end of the bar on exactly the right spot.

"All ready, sir."

"Drive it! Steady there," warned the voice of the head melter. "Keep watch, Rush, and sing out when you get enough."

After a moment the compressed air drill was put on, and after wearing the dam thin, the dolly was once more resorted to as that could be withdrawn much more quickly than could the compressed air drill. Haste was necessary, or the lives of the men would be in great peril in case the molten metal squirted from the dam around the sides of the dolly.

The furnace men, especially those on the tapping job, would be likely to get the full charge in their faces.

"Clank, clank, clank!" sounded the steel mall as it beat against the end of the bar held by Steve.

"Tap lighter," ordered the boy.

The sound of the blows grew fainter.

"That will do. We can poke out the opening after we step to one side. We shall then----"

"Bang!"

The mall struck the end of the dolly a terrific blow. The bar was driven through the thin sh.e.l.l of dolmite right into the hot metal of the furnace.

Like a projectile the dolly was wrenched from the hands of the Iron Boy.

It was shot through the air, right past him at tremendous speed.

Steve was about to shout, "Stop it!" but he was too late. The bar of iron was soaring out over the mill yard. The head melter's voice was raised above the din.

"Who did that? Who hit that bar?"

But Steve did not hear. For a brief second after the escape of the dolly he stood still on the bushing. With an angry hiss a stream of white hot metal shot past his head as though projected through the nozzle of a hose. It was a narrow escape, for, if the metal had struck him in the face, it would have gone clear through him.

A dull report sounded in the furnace itself.

"Look out for the flareback!" roared Pig-Iron Peel. "Run for it!"

Now a new sound smote their ears. It was a rumbling noise that seemed to start away down in the foundations of the blast furnace, working upward at a rapid rate.

Steve, who had quickly leaped from his dangerous position, glanced at the head melter inquiringly, as if to ask what this new thing might be.

"It's a hang-over!" shouted the melter. "Now we are in for it!"

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 c.o.ke 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 c.o.ke 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 c.o.ke 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. n.o.body ever was in a c.o.ke shower who didn't git more or less. .h.i.t, princ.i.p.ally 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 c.o.ke 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.