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Updated: June 25, 2025
"Quite," said Raut, and stood up also. There was another pause. Each of them peered through the indistinctness of the dusk at the other two. Horrocks' hand still rested on Raut's shoulder. Raut half fancied still that the incident was trivial after all. But Mrs. Horrocks knew her husband better, knew that grim quiet in his voice, and the confusion in her mind took a vague shape of physical evil.
There was another pause. Did the man mean to take the thing coolly? Did he after all know? How long had he been in the room? Yet even at the moment when they heard the door, their attitudes. . . . Horrocks glanced at the profile of the woman, shadowy pallid in the half-light. Then he glanced at Raut, and seemed to recover himself suddenly.
His eyes went from the woman he had trusted to the friend he had trusted, and then back to the woman. By this time and for the moment all three half understood one another. Yet none dared say a word to ease the pent-up things that choked them. It was the husband's voice that broke the silence at last. "You wanted to see me?" he said to Raut. Raut started as he spoke.
Even as they looked, a truckful of fuel was shot into one of the giants, and the red flames gleamed out, and a confusion of smoke and black dust came boiling upwards towards the sky. "Certainly you get some colour with your furnaces," said Raut, breaking a silence that had become apprehensive. Horrocks grunted.
"Quite," said Raut, and stood up also. There was another pause. Each of them peered through the indistinctness of the dusk at the other two. Horrocks' hand still rested on Raut's shoulder. Raut half fancied still that the incident was trivial after all. But Mrs. Horrocks knew her husband better, knew that grim quiet in his voice, and the confusion in her mind took a vague shape of physical evil.
Now we run it off in pipes, and burn it to heat the blast, and the top is shut by a cone. You'll be interested in that cone." "But every now and then," said Raut, "you get a burst of fire and smoke up there." "The cone's not fixed, it's hung by a chain from a lever, and balanced by an equipoise. You shall see it nearer. Else, of course, there'd be no way of getting fuel into the thing.
It's a damned sight too hot for roasting cakes. The top side of it's three hundred degrees." "Three hundred degrees!" said Raut. "Three hundred centigrade, mind!" said Horrocks. "It will boil the blood out of you in no time." "Eigh?" said Raut, and turned. "Boil the blood out of you in . . . No, you don't!" "Let me go!" screamed Raut. "Let go my arm!"
That line of red there a lovely bit of warm orange you'd call it, Raut that's the puddlers' furnaces, and there, in the hot light, three black figures did you see the white splash of the steam-hammer then? that's the rolling mills. Come along! Clang, clatter, how it goes rattling across the floor! Sheet tin, Raut, amazing stuff. Glass mirrors are not in it when that stuff comes from the mill.
And, squelch! there goes the hammer again. Come along!" He had to stop talking to catch at his breath. His arm twisted into Raut's with benumbing tightness. He had come striding down the black path towards the railway as though he was possessed. Raut had not spoken a word, had simply hung back against Horrocks' pull with all his strength.
"You haven't learnt the refinements of it yet then," said Raut, laughing artificially again. "By Jove! I'm black and blue." Horrocks offered no apology. They stood now near the bottom of the hill, close to the fence that bordered the railway. The ironworks had grown larger and spread out with their approach.
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