The day came at last--long expected, delayed by these unaccountable absences--when the members of the new company were to have the happiness of seeing their enterprise set going. The one still that was ready was filled with crude oil. The morning of the start Albert weighted down the safety-valve with heavy iron, and packed it with plaster of Paris. "Fire this still," he said to his fireman, "as heavy as you possibly can." The fireman did as he was ordered. During the forenoon Albert came to him. "Damn it!" he said, "you ain't firing this still half. Fire this still! I want you to fire this still! You ain't got no fire under it!" He took the shovel himself and threw some coal in, although there was, as the fireman expressed it, "an inordinary fire." The fire-box grew cherry red.[465] Albert knew well enough what the next chapter in the history of his associates was likely to be. He had carried a dark-lantern into the still-room one day when he was superintendent of the Vacuum. "I was badly burned by the explosion," he testified before the coroner's jury investigating the explosion in Rochester, in 1887. There were four explosions in the Vacuum works while he was there. In the second, four men were burned. As one of them ran to get water, with his clothes burning, he set fire to the gas coming out of the sewer. Flames flashed all about him. "There's hell all around!" he exclaimed. The third explosion came from an overheated condensing-pipe, and destroyed one of the buildings. The fourth burned up three tanks. Remembering all this, he now took himself off to the grounds of the Atlas Company, out of harm's reach. The brickwork about the still cracked apart with the heat. But the "smash-up or something" had not been thoroughly arranged. Despite the heavy weight and the packing of plaster, the safety-valve lifted itself under the unusual pressure, and was a safety-valve yet. It was blown open, and a large mass of vapor rose and spread. This was the real accident: that the safety-valve broke loose instead of keeping the gases in to explode, as had been planned. The spreading vapor was not steam, as that had not been admitted to the still, but the gas of distilling petroleum, as inflammable as gunpowder. There was danger still, as great almost as that of explosion. A spark of fire, and it would have wrapped all within its reach in flames. The boiler fires were but twenty feet distant; not far from them the distilled oil was being gathered in the "tail-house"; near the tail-house stood the tanks of crude oil, hundreds of barrels of the fuel that conflagration loves--the kind of fuel the cooks use who, beginning with kerosene for kindling, make the whole house into a stove, and cook themselves and the family with the breakfast.