"Oh, yes," he said: "too much hot; to hell with the money!"
They pay you two cents more an hour on the floor. At twenty minutes to five I went upstairs to my locker. Dick Reber, senior melter, stopped me.
"Need a man to-night; want to work?" he said; "always short, you know, on this —— long turn."
"Sure," I said.
That was one way to get promoted, I thought, and wondered how I'd stand fourteen more hours on top of the ten I had had.
"Beat it," yelled the melter.
Jack and I got our flat manganese shovels, and went on the run to the gallery. We were tapping at last. This furnaceful had cooked twenty-two hours. Nick was kneeling on water-soaked bagging, on the edge of the hot spout. He dug out the mud in the tap-hole with a pointed rod and sputtered oaths at the heat. Every few minutes the spout would burn through the bagging to his knees. He would get up, refold the bagging, and kneel again to the job.
Finally the metal gurgled out, a small stream the size of two fingers. Nick dodged back, and it swelled to a six-inch torrent.
"Heow, crane!"
Pete Grayson had come out, and was bawling something very urgently at the pit crane. The ladle swung closer; we could feel the increased wave of heat.