"This is Ignatz Brodsky. Sure, I help you. Reach up your hands. You must make hurry. We both get buried alive in the hot stuff."
Steve stretched up his arms to the boy Ignatz, who had that morning come out of the hospital and gone to work in the mill where he was employed on a furnace a short distance down the line from where the Iron Boys worked.
Ignatz knew whose pit had blown up. He knew that Steve was in an adjoining one, because from where he was shoveling he had seen Rush go down into the cinder hole a little while before the explosion occurred. As for Bob Jarvis, he had not been seen since the black column had lifted him from the floor.
Young Brodsky grasped the outstretched hands and began tugging with all his might. All his efforts were unavailing. Steve was being buried deeper and deeper every second.
"Hang on—I get somebody!" exclaimed Ignatz, darting away through the black cloud.
Kalinski, now running here and there, apparently very much upset over the disaster, was the first man the Pole met.
"Come quick!" he demanded, breathing hard.
"What do you want?" snarled Watski.
"The pit! There's a man in there and he can't get out!"
"Who is it?"