et. Look at the
scraps of iron. There's an old D. and O. sleeper, there's a lot of clips
from a cylinder, there's a lot of snipped-up rails, there's a
driving-wheel block, there's an old hook, and a sprinkling of
boiler-plates and rivets."

The bucket is tipped into the furnace with a thunderous roar and the
slag below pours forth more quickly. "An engine," says Experience,
reflectively, "can run over herself so to say. After she's broken up she
is made into sleepers for the line. You'll see how she's broken up
later." A few paces further on, semi-nude demons are capering over
strips of glowing hot iron which are put into a mill as rails and emerge
as thin, shapely tie-bars. The natives wear rough sandals and some
pretence of aprons, but the greater part of them is "all face." "As I
said before," says Experience, "a native's cuteness when he's working
on ticket is something startling. Beyond occasionally hanging on to a
red-hot bar too long and so letting their pincers be drawn through the
mills, these men take precious good care not to go wrong. Our machinery
is fenced and guard-railed as much as possible, and these men don't get
caught up by the belting. In the first place, they're careful--the
father warns the son and so on--and in the second, there's nothing about
'em for the belting to catch on unless the man shoves his hand in. Oh, a
native's no fool! He knows that it doesn't do to be foolish when he's
dealing with a crane or a driving-wheel. You're looking at all those
chopped rails? We make our iron as they blend baccy. We mix up all sorts
to get the required quality. Those rails have just been chopped by this
tobacco-cutter thing." Experience bends down and sets a vicious-looking,
parrot-headed beam to work. There is a quiver--a snap--and a dull smash
and a heavy rail is nipped in two like a stick of barley-sugar.

Elsewhere, a bull-nosed hydraulic cutter is rail-cutting as if it
enjoyed the fun. In another shed stand the steam-hammers; the unemployed
ones murmuring and muttering to themselves, as is the uncanny custom of
all steam-souled machinery. Experience, with his hand on a long lever,
makes one of the monsters perform: and though Ignorance knows that a man
designed and men do continually build steam-hammers, the effect is as
though Experience were maddening a chained beast. The massive block
slides down the guides, only to pause hungrily an inch above the anvil,
or restlessly throb through a foot and a