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 showed his card. He had an odd feeling that he should have said simply, "I have come here to save myself," as if the Italian gatekeeper would have known what he meant.

Inside this barrier the sound of pounding grew more and more violent. He went past one cavernous shed and another and another until he came to the one marked with a gigantic number in white paint—17. The yard, the shed, all the world about him was swarming with men—big, raw-boned men with high cheekbones, little, swarthy men, black men, men with flat, Kalmuck noses, some going towards the sheds, some moving away from them. Those who moved homeward were so black with sweat and soot that one could not tell which were negroes and which were white.

Stepping through a doorway, he found himself in a vast cavern echoing with sound, that reached up and up until its height became lost in smoke and shadows. High up, near the top, great cranes with white lights like piercing eyes, and tiny, black figures like ants climbing over them, moved ceaselessly back and forth, picking up tons of metal and putting it down again with a tremendous clatter. Here and there along the sides stood furnaces out of which men were drawing from time to time great piles of metal all rosy-white with heat. Flames leaped out of the ovens, licking the sides and casting fantastic shadows over the powerful, half-naked figures of the workers. The gigantic sound of hammering reverberated through the black cavern.

After a moment Philip addressed a thin, swarthy man with burning eyes. "Where is Krylenko?" he asked. But the man understood no English. "Kry-