Emerging from their cold bath, the worms, crawling along the ground behind the still-house, arrived at the back of another building, called the test-room; and here each one, making a sharp turn to enable him to enter, was pierced at the angle thus formed, and a vertical pipe some ten feet in length inserted.
The object of these pipes was to carry off the gas still mingled with the oil; and, looking attentively, Miselle could distinguish a flickering column ascending from each pipe and forming itself so humanly against the evening sky as to vindicate the superstition of the Saxons, who first named this ether geist.
"What a splendid illumination, if only those ten pipes were lighted some dark night!" suggested Miselle.
"Phe-ew! An' yer lumernation wouldn't stop there long, I can tell yer, Ma'am," retorted Tommy. "The whole works ud be in a swither 'fore iver we'd time to ax what was comin'."
"They would? And why?"
"The binzole, Ma'am, the binzole. It's the Divil's own stuff to manage, an' there's no thrustin' it wid so much as the light uv a pipe nigh hand. The air is full of it; and if you was so much as to sthrike a match here where we stand, it ud be all day wid us 'fore we'd time to think uv it. You should know that yersilf, Sir," continued he, turning to Mr. Williams.
"Yes," returned that gentleman, with a grimace. "I learned the nature of benzine pretty thoroughly when I first came on the Creek. I had been at work over one of the wells, and got my clothes pretty oily, but thought I would not ask my wife to meddle with them. So I sent for a pail of benzine, and, shutting myself up in my shop, set to work to wash my clothes. I succeeded very well for a first attempt; and when I had done, and hung them up to dry, I felt quite proud. Then, as it was pretty cold, I thought I would put a little fire in the stove, and get them dried to carry away before my men came in to work the next morning. So I put some kindling in the stove, and scraped a match on my boot; but I hadn't time to touch it to the shavings before the whole air was aflame, not catching from one point to another, but flashing through the whole place in an instant, and snapping all around my head like a bunch of fire-crackers. I rushed for the door; but before I could get out I was pretty well singed, and there was no such thing as saving a single article. All went together,—shop, stock, tools, clothes, and everything else. That's benzine."
"That's binzole," echoed Tommy. "An' now, Ma'am, come in, if yer plase, to the tistin'-room."
Miselle complied, and, stepping into the little room, saw first two parallel troughs running its entire length, and terminating at one end in a pipe leading through the side of the building. Into each of these troughs half the pipes were at this moment discharging a colorless, odorless fluid, the apotheosis, as it were, of petroleum.
Tommy, perching himself upon a high stool beside the troughs, regarded his visitors with calm superiority, and was evidently disposed, in this his stronghold, to treat with them ex cathedra.