He hurried down to the basement. As soon as he opened the door leading to it, down a steep flight of steps, Larry thought he had gotten into a boiler factory by mistake. The noise was deafening, and the presses were thundering away like some giant machine grinding tons of rocks to atoms. Half-naked men were running about here and there. In one corner was a furnace full of melted lead for making the stereotype plates. Larry made his way through the maze of wheels, machinery, and presses. He was met by a youth whose face was covered with ink. “Where’s Mr. Dunn?” asked Larry, shouting at the top of his voice. The youth did not bother to answer in words. He had been in the pressroom long enough to know the uselessness of trying to make himself heard above the din. He had understood Larry’s question from watching his lips, and pointed over in one corner. There Larry found a quiet man marking something in a book. “Mr. Emberg says to smash that name!” yelled the boy, handing over the paper. He was afraid he had not made himself heard, but Mr. Dunn seemed to comprehend, for he nodded several times, though he did not seem pleased. He hated to stop the presses, once they were running, until all the edition was off. However, it had to be done. He left his corner, and went around the rear of the ponderous machine, where the paper, in a large roll, was fed in at one end, to emerge, folded and printed sheets, at the other. Mr. Dunn seized a rope, and yanked it. A bell rang, and the press began to slacken up. The type from which the paper was printed was cast in one solid sheet, there being several of the sheets, just the size of a page. Each one was half-circular, and fitted around a cylinder on the press. This cylinder whirled around, and the paper, passing under it in a continuous roll, received the impressions. Once the press was stopped Mr. Dunn crawled up into a sort of hole in front of the cylinder, Then he had the press worked slowly, until the particular page he had to reach came into view. Next, with a hammer and chisel he smashed the name of Jones so that it was a meaningless blur. After that the press started its thundering again. The remainder of the papers would not contain the name of Jones, and so there would be no danger of that gentleman coming in and demanding an apology for a misstatement made about him. Often papers have to resort to this emergency when it is too late to correct directly in type an error that has been made. CHAPTER VI LARRY IN DANGER When Larry was eating supper that night he happened to glance out of the window. He saw an unusual light in the sky, and first took it for a glow from some gas furnace or smelting works across on the Jersey shore. But, as he watched, the light grew more brilliant, and there was a cloud of smoke and a shower of sparks. “That’s a big fire!” he exclaimed, jumping up.