"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 c.o.ke 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, "h.e.l.lo!"

"h.e.l.lo, 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 c.o.ke 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 c.o.ke?"

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

"Look here, pard, if you get funny I'll put you in with the c.o.ke 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 pa.s.sed 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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.

CHAPTER XV

MENACED BY A DOUBLE PERIL

"Look out!" roared the warning voice of the head melter.

Steve turned just in time to see a wall of golden metal almost towering over him. Even his quick mind did not grasp the meaning of the scene until it was too late. His muscles refused to obey his command, and for once in his life the Iron Boy stood with a sensation in his heart that was not far removed from fear. He did not know which way to turn for safety, even had he possessed the strength to escape from his perilous position.

Yells and shouts of warning from all sides merely served to confuse him the more. Had it been daylight Rush no doubt would have quickly thrown himself to one side.

Suddenly something came whirling through the air. The Iron Boy did not see it, and it is doubtful if more than one man about the furnace did.

It was a dark object, and it smote Steve across the chest with terrific force.