"Water, water!" he gasped, settling down in a heap.

No one laughed. No one cared. They were used to such scenes of suffering, and the rough furnace men felt no compa.s.sion for the suffering boy. It was the water man's business to cool him off and no concern of theirs.

In a short time Rush recovered and went staggering to his work again.

Once more he collapsed, and once more he was brought out of his partial faint by a pail of water and hose.

This kept up for the greater part of the night, but each succeeding collapse left him weaker and weaker. Still, Steve Rush clung doggedly to his task. Only his iron will kept him up. Every pore in his body was the outlet of a living stream of perspiration. Never in his life had he suffered the excruciating or long-drawn-out agony that he experienced as ladle man this night.

Pig-Iron Peel nodded approvingly. He was a rough man himself, but he appreciated pluck and he knew pluck when he saw it.

"You had better lie down between casts," he advised, grasping an arm of the Iron Boy, who was staggering about blindly after a successful dipping, for even in his suffering he was rapidly getting the knack of the work.

"I do--don't need to," gasped Steve.

"I don't care. I was simply telling you."

The next dip was worse than any that had preceded it. This time Steve did not need to be told. He fell down without any effort of his own. He simply collapsed, rolling over on his back on the hot brick flooring of the platform, where he lay gasping for breath.

A pail of water was dashed over him and the hoseman played the hose up and down his body. But Rush did not care. It is doubtful if he even felt the cooling effect of the water. The boy was too nearly spent for anything to matter. During this wait, however, he had more time to recover himself, and by the time the men were ready for the next cast he was on his feet. Steve's eyes were bloodshot, and seemed to stand out from their sockets like two red b.a.l.l.s. He worked automatically for the rest of the night, not answering questions addressed to him and probably not hearing any.

"They all have to go through the same experience," was the comforting a.s.surance of the head-melter. "You will come out all right in a day or so, if you don't die in the meantime."

Steve went on with his work in silence. At the coming of the dawn Jarvis came down from the charging platform, the whites of his eyes looking twice their natural size in their frame of black soot, which was plastered over the boy's face layer upon layer. Bob found Steve leaning wearily against a pillar. The latter's face was drawn and haggard. Rush looked years older. Jarvis gazed at him in astonishment.

"In the name of goodness what's the matter with you? Are you going to die--are you sick, or----"

"Nothing is the matter with me," answered Steve, the harsh lines that had grown on his face during the night smoothing out into a wan, but sunny smile.

"Well, if there isn't there ought to be, for you are about the worst-looking object I ever saw."

"You--you wouldn't take a prize yourself, at--at----"

"At a poultry show, no," finished Jarvis. "Come along; are you going home, or would you rather hang around here?"

"Home?" answered Steve.

"I think you will have to be carried, if you get there to-day. Shall I go get a rig for you? You're clean knocked out."

"I tell you I am all right," retorted Rush, with some show of irritation. "Don't you trouble yourself about me."

Bob gazed at his companion in surprise. Steve had never spoken to him in that tone before, so Jarvis kept still for a time as they went on across the yards, over the hot metal bridge and to the lower exit from the yards. As they were pa.s.sing out they met Ignatz Brodsky coming in. The Pole stopped short, peering into the face of Steve Rush.

"What the matter with you?"

"Nothing is the matter with me, Ignatz," answered Steve, by this time in better control of himself. "I am a little tired--that's all."

"You stay by the house to-night. You no go to the furnace; you go by the graveyard by and by."

"We expect to, you old croaker," scoffed Jarvis. "Go on, or else talk about something pleasant. Where are you working now?"

"I work by the hot bed," answered Ignatz.

Bob laughed heartily.

"I guess we all do, though they are not exactly beds. Well, so long; we must be going."

Brodsky bade them good-bye, Steve waving his hand; then the Pole stood looking after them, his eyes fixed longingly on Rush, whose gait was none too steady. Brodsky shook his head and went on to work.

"What's a hot bed, Steve?" questioned Bob.

"I don't know. I know a place that is hot enough to be called one."

"And I know two places, the one you work in and the one I work on top of. Do you know, the waste gas that comes out of the top of that stove is strong enough to light a whole town?"

"Goes up into the air, does it?"

"All that doesn't swoop down and suffocate me. I've been asphyxiated every ten minutes since I have been up there."

"I wonder why they don't use the gas for something else?" mused Rush. He lapsed into silence, pondering over this subject all the rest of the way home. This was well, for it made him forget his weariness in a measure.

Reaching the widow Brodsky's, Steve was for going to bed without any breakfast, but Bob was so insistent that the boy did sit down to his meal after having taken his bath. Rush ate a fairly nourishing breakfast and after that felt better. This, followed by a refreshing sleep put him in very good condition.

Steve left the house a couple of hours before it was time to go to work. He was still unsteady on his feet, but the color was returning to his face and his wonderful vitality was a.s.serting itself. He would be himself again, in a few hours, if he were out in the open away from the killing heat of the blast furnaces.

The boy wanted to see the furnaces by daylight so, that he might get a better idea of them than was possible in the night. He stopped to witness the work of the day shift as they made a cast. This was very interesting, though a wave of pity welled up in the heart of the Iron Boy for the suffering of the furnace men in the terrific heat to which they were subjected while tapping the furnace.

The cast over, he walked to where the huge black stoves towered above him, and through which the gas flamed and circulated to heat the air that was driven in over the charge in the furnace itself.

The engineer nodded to him.

"Where does the waste gas go to?" asked the Iron Boy.

"Out into the air. Why?"

"I should think they would use it for something else."

"What else?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I. We don't use gas for anything else, except running the gas engines over on the other side of the yard. I guess you don't know much about this business, or you wouldn't be asking such questions."

"One never learns much unless he does ask questions," answered the lad.

"I have learned more from asking questions that I ever have any other way."

"That's right, so long as you can find anybody who's willing to answer fool questions."

Steve walked away without replying. His mind was at work, what Jarvis called working over time. The lad was thinking deeply over what he had discovered, and, though he did not realize it at the time, he had come upon an idea that was to work a great change in one department of the great steel industry.