"An--an explosion at the top of the furnace, do you say?" gasped Rush.
"Yes. The whole business is blowing out of the top. Don't you hear it coming?"
The fiery rain of coke and ore had begun. It sounded like the roar of an approaching storm as it beat on the metal sides of the big stoves.
"But Jarvis is up there!" cried the Iron Boy, beginning to crawl from under the protecting stove.
"No, he ain't. Come back! You'll be killed. Why, you wouldn't stand any more show in that coke shower than you would to stand up under hot fire in battle, and perhaps not so much. Fellers do git through a battle without being hit. Nobody ever was in a coke shower who didn't git more or less hit, principally more."
"I tell you, Bob is up there. I must go----"
"Oh, he got blowed off when the explosion--when the hang-over----"
"Sure. He couldn't hang on in a hang-over, could he?"
Rush groaned. He ventured to peer from under the stove, up into the air. The top of the furnace was a volcano in full eruption. Fire, smoke and coke were belching high up into the air, there spreading out like a great umbrella and raining down over a wide area.
Pig-Iron reached out a hand, jerking Steve roughly back.
"Most likely. Ought to be, if he isn't after getting that dose."
All at once Rush broke away from the head melter, darted to the iron ladder, and, regardless of the rain of coke, began running up the ladder. The boy got blow upon blow over head and shoulders, as the stuff beat down upon him, but he kept his head down and pluckily kept on up the ladder.
"Come back!" roared Pig-Iron, darting from cover at the risk of his life. But Steve was too far up the ladder to be seen from below. The head melter again bellowed his command to Rush to return.
In the meantime the boy had reached the top. Jarvis was not there. Steve cried out to him, but there was no response. With a catch in his breath, Rush turned and slid down the ladder to the base of the furnace. His head was cut and bleeding from the flying coke, and his shoulders were wounded in many different places.
Steve staggered rather than walked over to the stove where he dropped down.
"Well, he ain't there, is he?" demanded Pig-Iron.
"No; he isn't there. Where--where do you think he is?"