"Forge . . . rifle barrels . . . come and see and mind where you tread!"
Treading as seemingly silent as those wild human shapes, that straightened brawny backs to view me as I passed, that grinned in the fire-glow and spoke one to another, words lost to my stunned hearing, ere they bent to their labour again, obediently I followed the Captain's dim form until I was come where, bare-armed, leathern-aproned and be-spectacled, stood one who seemed of some account among these salamanders, who, nodding to certain words addressed to him by the Captain, seized a pair of tongs, swung open a furnace door, and plucking thence a glowing brand, whirled it with practised ease, and setting it upon the dies beneath a huge steam-hammer, nodded his head. Instantly that mighty engine fell to work, thumping and banging with mighty strokes, and with each stroke that glowing steel bar changed and changed, grew round, grew thin, hunched a shoulder here, showed a flat there, until, lo! before my eyes was