The other's face, the colour of old iron, remained impassive, and he contented himself with replying: 'Yes, Monsieur Jordan, I wanted to see your machine.'
Luc, however, scrutinised him rather anxiously. He had given orders to have him watched, for he had learnt that he had been found leaning over the mouth of the blast furnace, when the latter was still full of glowing embers, like a man preparing to fling himself into that frightful hell. One of the smelters under his orders, however, had saved him from that death which he had contemplated, perchance as a last gift of his scorched frame to the monster, as though indeed he set his pride in dying by fire, after loving and serving it so faithfully for more than half a century.
'It is pleasant to find you still inquisitive at your age, my good Morfain,' said Luc, without taking his eyes from him. 'Now, just examine these toys.'
The battery stretched out before them, showing ten furnaces, ten cubes of red brick-work over six feet high and nearly five feet long. And above them one only saw the powerful electrodes, thick cylinders of carbon, to which the electric cables were attached. The operations were very simple. An endless screw, worked by a switch, served the ten furnaces, bringing the ore and discharging it into them. A second switch set up the current, the arc whose extraordinary temperature of two thousand degrees sufficed to melt almost four hundredweight of metal in five minutes. And it was only necessary to turn a third switch for the platinum door of each oven to rise up and for a kind of rolling way, lined with fine sand, to start off on the march and receive the ten pigs, each of four hundredweight, and carry them into the cool air outside.
'Well, my good Morfain,' asked Jordan with the gaiety of a happy child, 'what do you think of it?'
Then he told him of the output. Those toys, each yielding four hundredweight of metal every five minutes, could turn out altogether a total of two hundred and forty tons daily, if they were allowed to work ten hours at a stretch. This was a prodigious output when one considered that the old blast-furnace, burning day and night alike, could not supply one-third of the quantity. As a matter of fact the electrical furnaces were seldom kept working more than three or four hours, and the advantage was that they could be lighted and extinguished as one pleased, in accordance with one's needs, whatever quantity of raw material that was required being immediately obtained. And how easily they worked, and what cleanliness and simplicity there was! As the electrodes themselves supplied the carbon necessary for the carburisation of the ore, there was little dust. The gases alone escaped, and the quantity of slag was so small that a daily cleaning sufficed to get rid of it. There was no longer any need of a barbarous colossus whose digestion caused disquietude, nor of any of the numerous and cumbersome appendages, the purifiers, the heaters, the blast machinery, and the constant current of water, with which it had been necessary to surround it. There was no longer any fear of stoppages or cooling down, nor any talk of demolishing or emptying the monster whilst still ablaze, because a twyer simply went wrong. Loaders watching at the mouth, and smelters piercing the plug and broiling in the flames of the 'runs' were no longer required to be on the alert, following one another incessantly with day and night shifts. The battery of the ten electrical furnaces, extending over a surface under fifty feet in length and some sixteen feet in width, was at its ease in the large, bright, glazed shed which sheltered it. And three children would have sufficed to set everything going, one at the switch of the endless screw, a second at the switch of the electrodes, and a third at that of the rolling way.
'What do you think of it? What do you think of it, my good Morfain?' repeated Jordan triumphantly.
The old master-smelter still looked at the furnaces without moving or speaking. Night was already at hand, shadows were filling the shed, and the working of the battery, with its gentle mechanical regularity, was quite impressive. Cold and dim, the ten furnaces seemed to slumber, whilst the little cars of ore, moved by the endless screw, were emptied one by one. Then every five minutes the platinum doors opened, the ten white jets of the ten 'runs' blazed upon the gloom, and the ten pigs, flowery with cornflowers amidst ears of wheat, slowly and continuously journeyed off on the rolling way.
However, Petit-Da, who hitherto had remained silent, wished to give some explanations, and pointing to the thick cable which, descending from the rafters, brought the current to the furnaces, he said, 'You see, father, the electricity comes along that cable, and such is its force that if the wires were severed everything would be blown up!'
Luc, whom Morfain's calmness had reassured, began to laugh. 'Don't say that,' he exclaimed, 'you would frighten our young people. Nothing would be blown up. Only the imprudent man who touched the wires would be in danger. Besides, the cable is a strong one.'