oad expanse of the river. "It's a
process, really, but the whole mill is called after it. We make steel
from iron scrap; that's our specialty in the Medial Works; and our
stuff's as good as the best. The bigger concerns mostly use pig. Turn in
here." They were facing the towering end of an iron shed, and mounted a
steep ascent to gain the upper entrance. The multiplication of noises
beat in an increasing volume about Howat Penny. Below him a locomotive
screeched with a freight of slag; beyond was a heap of massive, broken
moulds; and a train of small trucks held empty iron boxes beside an
enormous bank of iron scrap dominated by a huge crane swinging a
circular magnet that dispassionately picked up ton loads and bore them
to the waiting cars.

Inside he gazed through a long vista under a roof lost in tenebrious
shadow. On one side were ranged the furnaces, a continuous bank of brick
bound in iron; each furnace with five doors, closed with black slides in
which a round opening emitted an intolerable, dazzling white glare. But
few men, Howat thought, were visible in proportion to the magnitude of
the work; deliberately engaged, with leather shields hanging from their
wrists and blue spectacles pushed up on their grimy brows.

A crane advanced with the shrill racket of an electric gong, its
operator caged in midair, and herculean grappling chains swinging. A
grinding truck, filling the width of floor, moved forward to where Howat
stood. It was, Polder told him, the charging machine. An iron beam
projected opposite the furnace doors, and it was locked into one of the
charging boxes, filled with scrap metal, standing on the rails against
the furnaces. A man behind him dragged forward a lever, the slide which
covered a door rose ponderously on a blinding, incandescent core, and
the beam thrust forward into the blaze, turning round and round in the
emptying of the box. It was withdrawn, the slide dropped, and the
machine retreated, its complex movements controlled by a single engineer
at crackling switches where the power leaped in points of light like
violets.

At another furnace, an opened door, where the heat poured out in a
constricting blast, workmen were shovelling in powdery white stone;
moving up with their heads averted, and quickly retreating with
shielding arms. "That's dolomite," James Polder's explanations went
rapidly forward. "They are banking up the furnace. The other, in the
bins, is ferro manganese." He pr