The Iron Boys in the Steel Mills; or, Beginning Anew in the Cinder Pits

  CHAPTER XIV

  BY THE ROARING FURNACES

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

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

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

  It was to the blast furnaces that the Iron Boys were assigned, and theywere to take the night trick. As they made their way that night throughthe yards of the mill, where engines were shrieking their warnings, carswere thundering here and there, long trains of red-hot metal rumblingover the hot metal bridge from the blast furnaces to the mills, whilethe flames were leaping skyward from the blast furnaces, Steve haltedfor a moment to gaze on the scene. Neither boy ever had been in theyards 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 werereporting to the head melter at the furnace, and being late meant beingdocked, for there is no sentiment in the steel mills. Every man wasexpected to do his full duty and a little more. Most of them did thelatter.

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

  Men with barrows were rushing about, bells clanged as the charge wasready to hoist on the top of the furnace to be dumped into itsnever-satisfied mouth. The ore was carried up by another skip. Throughthe stoves roared a gas flame, leaping, licking, here and there reachingout a forked tongue as though in search of fresh prey. The odor of gaswas well-nigh overpowering to the Iron Boys, for they were not used toit.

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

  Two men were inserting the prodding rod against the dolmite that pluggedthe ore hole near the bottom of the furnace. The perspiration wasrunning 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 thedolmite 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'sear. The roar of the furnaces and the gas in the huge stoves made hisvoice sound weak and far away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The Iron Boys drew a deep sigh as the operation was concluded. Fourhours would elapse before another cast would be made from number fourfurnace, but here and there along the row of huge cones stars werebursting, streams of hot, yellow lava flowing and men shouting, snarlingor begging for water.

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

  "It strikes me as being grandly hot," answered Jarvis. "Whew, a fellowdoesn'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 shouldthink they would burn their skin off. I don't know whether I can standthis 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, knownunder the name of Pig-Iron Peel, had received orders regarding the IronBoys.

  He motioned them to approach, when a furnace hand told him who theywere. 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 theladles. 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 havemuch 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 youlike it?"

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

  "Dump the charges into the furnace. The skips you have nothing to dowith, except to ring a bell when you are ready for them. They will dumpfour loads of red ore into the furnace; then you throw in a layer ofcoke and limestone, the latter being called 'flux.' This makes what wecall 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 comesto 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 surelyfall off."

  "Rush, the sand man will s
how you about the troughs. Jarvis, you hikeupstairs. Tell the man I have up there that you are to relieve him. Hewill show you about operating the levers. Have him put in a charge whileyou 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 anyreason to complain about either light or heat. This charging business isa continuous performance day and night, until the furnaces have to beshut down for cleaning. For your information I will tell you that theiron, being the heaviest, sinks to the bottom of the furnace as it ismelted. The cinders trickle down after it, forming what is called theheart. The latter are tapped off every two hours, the iron every fourhours. If you are going to be furnace men you will want to know allthese things at the start."

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

  "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. Hehad not gone far before he discovered that the rungs of the iron ladderwere hot. They were so much so that he yelled, "ouch!" removing firstone hand and then the other to rub it on his trousers. He was unable tokeep 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 thefifty-foot ladder. Finally he decided he must have gone about a hundredfeet, instead of fifty and halting he shouted, "Hello!"

  "Hello, yourself," answered a gruff voice from the cloud above. "What doyou 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," laughedthe 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 stoodfacing 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 andthe--the limestone. I'll bet they'd never get the impurities out of theiron 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 thecharging boy. "Git busy here; I'm going down. I don't belong up hereanyway, and I'm glad of it."

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

  With a grunt of disapproval the charging boy instructed Jarvis in hisduties, then with a "so-long," hurried down the ladder, leaving the IronBoy 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 greatflame would swoop down a fiery tongue as if bent upon lapping him up.Bob instinctively ducked as the breeze carried the flame down towardhim. He believed that a gust of wind would surely bring the flame onhim, 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 offire from the stoves of the other furnaces, and over on the oppositeside of the river black smoke and red fire poured from the funnels ofthe open-hearth furnaces there. Bob himself was enveloped in a densecloud of suffocating smoke, which, breathed into his lungs, set himcoughing and choking.

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

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

  Down below Steve, on hands and knees, was patting the sand in thegutters into place, smoothing it off so that there should be noprojections to catch and retard the flow of the hot metal when the nextcast was made. He found Pig-Iron Peel, despite his rough appearance, tobe a kind-hearted man. This was a distinct relief after the experienceof the lads in the cinder pits under two bosses who had lost noopportunity to do them harm. Now and then the head melter would stepover to instruct the Iron Boy in his duties, and even at the distancefrom the furnace that Steve was working the heat was well-nighunbearable. He was obliged to make frequent trips to the water barrel,and now and then he showered himself from head to foot with the readyhose. The skin was peeling from his face and his work clothes wereburned 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 nospecial significance for him. In the darkness preceding the cast theothers 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 moltenmetal swooped down on Steve Rush in its all-consuming flight.