"Trying to break in, eh?"
"Is there any chance?" inquired Ralph, pausing slightly.
Ike Slump laughed boisterously. He was a year or two older than Ralph, but had a face prematurely developed with cunning and tobacco, and looked twenty-five.
"Yes," he said, "if you're anxious to get boiled, blistered, oiled and blinded twenty times a day, be kicked from platform to pit, and paid just about enough to buy arnica and sticking plaster!"
"Bad as that?" interrogated Ralph dubiously.
"For a fact!"
"Oh, well--there's something beyond."
"Beyond what?"
"When you get out of the oil and cinders, and up into the sand and steam."
"Huh! lots of chance. I've been here six months, and I haven't had a smell of firing yet--even second best."