sides of him at once; where miniature steam-engines came
rushing upon him, and sizzling, quivering, white-hot
masses of metal sped past him, and explosions of fire and
flaming sparks dazzled him and scorched his face. The
men in these mills were all black with soot, and hollow-
eyed and gaunt; they worked with fierce intensity, rush~
ing here and there, and never lifting their eyes from
their tasks. Jurgis clung to his guide like a scared child
to its nurse, and while the latter hailed one foreman after
another to ask if they could use another unskilled man,
he stared about him and marveled.

He was taken to the Bessemer furnace, where they
made billets of steel -- a dome-like building the size of a
big theater. Jurgis stood where the balcony of the theater
would have been, and opposite, by the stage, he saw three
giant caldrons, big enough for all the devils of hell to
brew their broth in, full of something white and blinding,
bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes were blow~
ing through it -- one had to shout to be heard in the place.
Liquid fire would leap from these caldrons and scatter
like bombs below -- and men were working there, seem~
ing careless, so that Jurgis caught his breath with fright.
Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the
theater would come a little engine with a car-load of some~
thing to be dumped into one of the receptacles; and then
another whistle would toot, down by the stage, and an~
other train would back up -- and suddenly, without an
instant's warning, one of the giant kettles began to tilt
and topple, flinging out a jet of hissing, roaring flame.
Jurgis shrank back appalled, for he thought it was an
accident; there fell a pillar of white flame, dazzling as the
sun, swishing like a huge tree falling in the forest. A
torrent of sparks swept all the way across the building,
overwhelming everything, hiding it from sight; and then
Jurgis looked through the fingers of his hands, and saw
pouring out of the caldron a cascade of living, leaping fire,
white with a whiteness not of earth, scorching the eyeballs.
Incandescent rainbows shone above it, blue, red, and golden
lights played about it; but the stream itself was white,

[[246]]

p245 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p246w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p247

v?