ek of the furnace, a sulphurous vapour streaked with pungent
bitterness, seemed to make the distant hillside of Hanley quiver. The moon
was riding out now from among a drift of clouds, half-way up the sky above
the undulating wooded outlines of Newcastle. The steaming canal ran away
from below them under an indistinct bridge, and vanished into the dim haze
of the flat fields towards Burslem.

"That's the cone I've been telling you of," shouted Horrocks; "and, below
that, sixty feet of fire and molten metal, with the air of the blast
frothing through it like gas in soda-water."

Raut gripped the hand-rail tightly, and stared down at the cone. The heat
was intense. The boiling of the iron and the tumult of the blast made a
thunderous accompaniment to Horrocks's voice. But the thing had to be gone
through now. Perhaps, after all...

"In the middle," bawled Horrocks, "temperature near a thousand degrees. If
_you_ were dropped into it ... flash into flame like a pinch of
gunpowder in a candle. Put your hand out and feel the heat of his breath.
Why, even up here I've seen the rain-water boiling off the trucks. And
that cone there. It's a damned sight too hot for roasting cakes. The top
side of it's three hundred degrees."

"Three hundred degrees!" said Raut.

"Three hundred centigrade, mind!" said Horrocks. "It will boil the blood
out of you in no time."

"Eigh?" said Raut, and turned.

"Boil the blood out of you in ... No, you don't!"

"Let me go!" screamed Raut. "Let go my arm!"

With one hand he clutched at the hand-rail, then with both. For a moment
the two men stood swaying. Then suddenly, with a violent jerk, Horrocks
had twisted him from his hold. He clutched at Horrocks and missed, his
foot went back into empty air; in mid-air he twisted himself, and then
cheek and shoulder and knee struck the hot cone together.

He clutched the chain by which the cone hung, and the thing sank an
infinitesimal amount as he struck it. A circle of glowing red appeared
about him, and a tongue of flame, released from the chaos within,
flickered up towards him. An intense pain assailed him at the knees, and
he could smell the singeing of his hands. He raised himself to his feet,
and tried to climb up the chain, and then something struck his head. Black
and shining with the moonlight, the throat of the furnace rose about
him.

Horrocks, he saw, stood above him by one of the trucks of fuel on the
rail. The gesticulating figure w