This explosion took place at the freezing-house, which is the one place in all the works where dynamite is never expected to explode. Yet it did explode now, with a smashing of air and a horrible grinding underfoot that stifled all things in men but a mad desire to flee.
Joshua Plumstead was in the nitrating-house alone. His helper had fled. The roof timbers were crashing down about him. He heard the hiss of fire and the shouts of workmen running. He knew that a second explosion might come at any moment. There was danger from fire-brands and flying masses of stone and iron, danger from the open troughs, danger from the near-by houses. A shock, a spark anywhere here might mean the end.
Plumstead kept his eyes on the long thermometer that reached up from the furious smoking mass of oil and acid. The mercury had crept up from eighty-five to ninety, and was rising still. At ninety-five he knew the nitroglycerin would take fire, probably explode, and nothing could save it. The vat was seething with a full charge. Ninety-one! He shut off the inflow of glycerin. Ninety-two! Something might be wrong with the coils of ice-cold water that chill the vat down to safety. He opened the cocks full. Crash! came a beam from overhead, and narrowly missed the gearing of the agitating-blades. Were they to stop but for a single second, the nitroglycerin would explode. He eased the bearings, turned on compressed air, watched the thermometer—and waited.
"HE KNEW THAT A SECOND EXPLOSION MIGHT COME AT ANY MOMENT."
There was no other man but Plumstead who did wait that day; there was none but he whose waiting could avail anything. He had to fight it out alone with that ton of nitroglycerin, or run and let an explosion come far worse than the other. He fought it out; he waited, and he won. Gradually the thermometer dropped to eighty-five, to eighty, and the danger was passed.
But—well, even the superintendent admitted that Joshua did a rather fine thing here, while the workmen themselves and the people of Kenvil shake their heads solemnly and vow that he saved the works.