I entered the open-hearth mill by the tracks that ran close to the furnaces. The mill noises broke on me: a moan and rattle of cranes overhead, fifty-ton ones; the jarring of the train-loads of charge-boxes stopping suddenly in front of Number 4; and minor sounds like chains jangling on being dropped, or gravel swishing out of a box. I was conscious of muscles growing tense, in the face of this violent environment, a somewhat artificial and eager calm. I walked with excessive firmness, and felt my personality contracting itself into the mere sense of sight and sound.
I looked for Pete.
"He's in his shanty—over there," said an American furnace-helper, who was getting into his mill clothes.
I went after Pete's shanty. It was a sheet-iron box, 12 by 12, midway down the floor, near a steel beam. Pete was coming out, buttoning the lower buttons of a blue shirt. He looked through my head and passed me, much as he had passed the steel beam. With two or three steps I moved out and blocked his way. He looked at me, loosened his face, and said very cheerfully: "Hello."
"I've come to work," I said.
"Here," he said, "you'll work th' pit t' night. Few days, y' know, get used ter things."
He led the way to some iron stairs, and we went down together into that darkened region under the furnaces, about whose function I had speculated.
To the left I could make out tracks. Railroads seem to run through a steel mill from cellar to attic. And at intervals, from above the tracks, torrents of sparks swept into the dark, with now and then a small stream of yellow fire.
We stumbled over bricks, mud, clay, a shovel, and the railroad track. In front of a narrow curtain of molten slag, falling on the floor, we waited for some moments. We were under the middle furnaces, I calculated. Gradually the curtain ceased, and Pete leaped under the hole from which it had come.
"Watch yourself," he said.