Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/255

244 splendidly grim. Now, he's really a man," and Stewart laughed, "of whom it might be said that the iron has entered into his soul. Not like that fellow Farrell, who's too lively and genial-looking; this man's much more my idea of the typical iron-worker."

Tustin ignored them, sitting with his two helpers beside the rolls of which he had charge. He kept his right hand on the lever that controlled the great hammer and gazed sullenly at the white-hot slab that was being thinned and elongated before his eyes. A pipe held in one corner of his mouth contributed to the dogged, meditative sourness of his expression. He was a powerfully built man; his suspenders, crossed upon his blue flannel shirt, marked out the thick muscles of his shoulders.

At the end of the building was a row of furnaces in front of which passed a car, a great leviathan with a long arm which it would stretch forward into a red-hot furnace mouth. In a moment this arm would be withdrawn, clutching a huge white-hot slab of steel, which the leviathan would rapidly carry on to a great double hook suspended by a traveling chain. The hook would then swing forward and lay the slab on the series of cylinders before which Tustin sat. The cylinders would be set in motion, passing the white-hot slab back and forth under a hammer that squeezed down on it, gradually flattening and elongating it. Three times at least was the slab passed back and forth and sometimes four; this was decided by Tustin, who after the third passage would leave his seat and test the edge of the steel with a pair of tongs. After the slab had been under the hammer twice, one of the helpers would turn on the water-cocks of the engine and spray it; clouds of steam would hiss up, and the streams of water would be illuminated, turning green, purple, and orange, as the hot metal came groaning under them. And when this point was reached, the great double hook was always waiting with another white-hot slab in its clutch, holding it patiently till it should be time to lay it on the rolls.