the caldron has a pair of thick leather gloves to protect his
hands in case sparks fly out. Suddenly he seizes the caldron with a pair
of pincers, and, dragging it from the fire, he tilts it up so that the
molten gold runs out in a stream into a number of tubes like long
straight jars joined together. The gold flows in, bubbles up, and that
one is full to the top; and then the next is filled, and the next, and
so on to the end. Then the gold is left to cool. The big caldron goes
back on to the furnace to boil more gold. As the gold boils a tiny
quantity of it gets into the sides of the caldron and sticks to them,
and this is too valuable to lose, and so after the caldron has been used
a certain number of times it is broken up and melted so as to recover
this gold again, and not a grain is lost.

When the gold which has been poured into the jars has cooled it is solid
again, and has taken the shape of the jars--that is to say, it is in
bars of gold. You will be given one to handle and feel; it is a flat bar
of gleaming gold weighing a great deal. The bars are then taken and put
under a machine something like a mangle, and the machine squeezes and
presses them with such terrific force that they are squeezed out thinner
and thinner, and, of course, get longer and longer in the process. Just
think what tremendous force must be used to press out a bar of gold!
When at last they are ready these long thin slabs of gold are the
thickness of a sovereign.

Now, each of these bars is passed through a machine, which cuts out of
it a double row of holes just the size of sovereigns all the way down,
and the little gold pieces thus neatly cut out drop down below into a
box. Take one up and look at it; it is smooth and clean and round, the
size of a sovereign, but it has as yet no King's head on it, and the
edges are smooth, not rough as in a real sovereign. So each of these
little round gold pieces is taken away to another room to be finished,
and the remainder of the long thin strip out of which they were cut goes
back to the caldron to be boiled up again and made into more sovereigns.

You will notice that every time we go through a door at the Mint it is
unlocked for us to go through, and locked again behind us; this is
because the gold is so valuable. No one is allowed to pass in and out
without being watched, lest they should carry some away with them. Every
night each one of these rooms is carefully swept out, and the sweepings