Steve, who had quickly leaped from his dangerous position, glanced at the head melter inquiringly, as if to ask what this new thing might be. "It's a hang-over!" shouted the melter. "Now we are in for it!" CHAPTER XVIII IN A FIERY RAIN Steve Rush did not know what a hang-over might be. He had just had a practical demonstration of what a flareback was. This, however, he did not know was caused by an explosion of the molten metal, either from a stream of water touching it or a too sudden inrush of cool air. At any rate the metal in the furnace, just as the dolly was driven in, had suffered a partial explosion. The air was full of molten metal shooting in all directions. Some of the men back of where the monkey-man had been standing had been quite seriously burned in the explosion. Steve, seeing three of them flattened on the platform, dashed in at the risk of his own life, dragging the men to positions of safety. "Get under cover!" bellowed Pig-Iron. "Don't you know there's a hang-over?" "What's a hang-over--what am I to look out for?" shouted Steve. "That's an explosion at the top caused by a stoppage of the vents in the charge," explained Peel, as the two hurriedly crawled in under one of the huge heating stoves. "It'll be raining coke here, in a minute, till you can't see ten feet ahead of you." "An--an explosion at the top of the furnace, do you say?" gasped Rush. "Yes. The whole business is blowing out of the top. Don't you hear it coming?" The fiery rain of coke and ore had begun. It sounded like the roar of an approaching storm as it beat on the metal sides of the big stoves. "But Jarvis is up there!" cried the Iron Boy, beginning to crawl from under the protecting stove. "No, he ain't. Come back! You'll be killed. Why, you wouldn't stand any more show in that coke shower than you would to stand up under hot fire in battle, and perhaps not so much. Fellers do git through a battle without being hit. Nobody ever was in a coke shower who didn't git more or less hit, principally more." "I tell you, Bob is up there. I must go----" "No, he ain't." "He isn't? Then where is he?" "Oh, he got blowed off when the explosion--when the hang-over----" "Blown off?" "Sure. He couldn't hang on in a hang-over, could he?" Rush groaned. He ventured to peer from under the stove, up into the air. The top of the furnace was a volcano in full eruption. Fire, smoke and coke were belching high up into the air, there spreading out like a great umbrella and raining down over a wide area. Pig-Iron reached out a hand, jerking Steve roughly back. "Don't be a fool!" he growled. "Do--do you think Jarvis is killed?" "Most likely. Ought to be, if he isn't after getting that dose."