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Bobrov, tired and almost ill after his fit of the previous night, sat all alone in a corner of the hall, smoking a great deal. When the Zinenko family came in and sat down chirping loudly at a round table, he had two very vague feelings. On the one hand, he was ashamed – a heart-searing shame for another – of the tactlessness which he felt the family had shown by coming. On the other hand, he was glad to see Nina, ruddy with the swift drive, her eyes shining with excitement; she was very prettily dressed and, as always happens, looked much more beautiful than his imagination had painted her. His sick, harassed soul suddenly flamed up with irrepressible desire for a tender, fragrant love, with longing for a woman’s habitual, soothing caress.
He sought for a chance to approach Nina, but she was busy chatting with two mining students, who were vying with each other to make her laugh. And she did laugh, more cheerful and coquettish than ever, her small white teeth gleaming. Nevertheless, twice or three times her gaze met Bobrov’s, and he fancied that her eyebrows were slightly raised in a silent, but not hostile query.
The bell rang on the platform, announcing that the train had left the previous station. There was a commotion among the engineers. Smiling sarcastically, Bobrov from his corner watched twenty-odd men gripped by the same cowardly thought; their faces suddenly became grave and worried, their hands ran for the last time over the buttons of their frock-coats, their neckties and caps, and their eyes turned towards the bell. Soon no one was left in the hall.
Bobrov went out on to the platform. The young ladies, abandoned by the men who had been entertaining them, crowded helplessly round Anna Afanasyevna, near the door. Nina turned to face Bobrov, who had been gazing at her fixedly, and walked over to him, as if guessing that he wanted to talk to her in private.
“Good morning. Why are you so pale today? You don’t feel well?” she asked, holding his hand in a firm, tender grasp and looking him in the eyes, earnestly and caressingly. “Why did you leave so early last night, without even saying goodbye? Were, you angry?”
“Yes and no,” replied Bobrov, with a smile. “No, because I have no right to be angry, have I?”
“I think anybody has a right to be angry. Especially if he knows that his opinion is valued highly. Why ‘yes’?”
“Because – You see, Nina Grigoryevna,” said Bobrov, feeling a surge of boldness, “last night when you and I were sitting on the veranda – remember? – I had a few wonderful moments, thanks to you. And I realized that if you’d wanted to, you could have made me the happiest man on earth – But why should I be afraid or hesitate? You know, don’t you – you must have guessed, you must have known for a long time that I – ”
He could not finish. The boldness that had surged over him was suddenly gone.
“That you what? What were you going to say?” asked Nina, with feigned indifference, but in a voice which quivered in spite of her, and casting down her eyes.
She expected a confession of love, which always thrills the hearts of young girls so strongly and so sweetly, no matter whether they share the sentiment or not. Her cheeks had paled slightly.
“Not now – some other time,” Bobrov stammered. “I’ll tell you some other day. But not now, for goodness’ sake,” he added entreatingly.
“All right. But still, why were you angry?”
“Because, after those few moments, I walked into the dining-room in a most – how shall I put it? – in a most tender mood, and when I walked in – ”
“You were shocked by the talk about Kvashnin’s income, is that it?” Nina prompted, with that instinctive perspicacity which sometimes comes to the most narrow-minded women. “Am I right?” She faced him squarely, and once more enveloped him in a deep, caressing gaze. “Be frank. You mustn’t keep anything from your friend.’”
Some three or four months before, while boating with a crowd of others, Nina, excited and softened by the beauty of the warm summer night, had offered Bobrov her friendship to the end of time. He had accepted the offer’ very earnestly, and for a whole week had called her his’ friend, just as she had called him hers. And whenever; she had said my friend, slowly and significantly, with her usual languorous air, the two short words had gone straight to his heart. Now he recalled the joke, and replied with a sigh:
“Good, ‘my friend,’ I’ll tell you the whole truth though it won’t be easy. You always inspire me with a painfully divided feeling. As we talk there are moments when, by just one word, one gesture, or even one look, you suddenly make me so happy! Ah, but how can I put such a sensation into words? Have you ever noticed it?”
“Yes,” she replied almost in a whisper, and lowered her eyes, with a sly flutter of lashes.
“And then, all of a sudden, you would become a provincial young lady, with a standard vocabulary of stock phrases and an affected manner. Please don’t be cross with me for my frankness. I wouldn’t have spoken if it hadn’t tormented me so terribly.” “I’ve noticed that, too.”
“Well, there you are. I’ve always been sure that you have a responsive and tender heart. But why don’t you want to be always as you are at this moment?”
She turned to face him again, and even moved her hand, as if to touch his. They were walking up and down the vacant end of the platform.
“You never tried to understand me, Andrei Ilyich,” she said reproachfully. “You’re nervous and impatient. You exaggerate all that is good in me, but then you won’t forgive me for being what I am, though, in the environment in which I live, I can’t really be anything else. It would be ridiculous if I were – it would bring discord into our family. I’m too weak and, to tell the truth, too insignificant to fight and be independent. I go where everybody else does, and I look on things and judge them as everybody else does. And don’t imagine I don’t know I’m common. But when I’m with the others I don’t feel it as I do with you. In your presence I lose all sense of proportion because – ” She faltered. “Oh, well – because you’re quite different, because I’ve never met anyone like you in my life.”
She thought she was speaking sincerely. The invigorating freshness of the autumn air, the bustle at the station, the consciousness of her own beauty, and the pleasure she felt sensing Bobrov’s loving gaze fixed upon her, electrified her, like all hysterical characters, into lying with inspiration and charm, and quite unwittingly. Admiring herself in her new role of a young lady craving for moral support, she wanted to say agreeable things to Bobrov.
“I know you look on me as a flirt. Please don’t deny it – I admit I give you cause to think that. For example, I often chat with Miller and laugh at his jokes. But if you only knew how I detest that oily cherub! Or take those two students. A handsome man is disagreeable because he’s always admiring himself, if for no other reason. Believe me, although it may sound strange, plain men have always appealed to me particularly.”
As she uttered this charming sentence in her most tender accents, Bobrov drew a mournful sigh. Alas! he had heard this cruel consolation from women more than once, a consolation they never refuse to their ugly admirers.
“So I may hope to appeal to you some day?” he asked in a joking tone which, however, clearly suggested bitter self-mockery.
Nina hastened to make up for her blunder. “See what a man you are. I positively can’t talk with you. Must you fish for compliments, sir? Shame on you!”
She was a little embarrassed by her own gaucherie, and to change the subject she asked in a playfully imperious voice, “Well, now, what was it you were going to tell me in different circumstances? Kindly answer me at once!”
“I don’t know – I don’t remember,” Bobrov stammered, his ardour damped.
“Then I’ll remind you, my secretive friend. You began by speaking of last night. You said something about wonderful moments, and then you said that I must have noticed long ago – but noticed what? You didn’t finish. So kindly say it now. I demand it, do you hear?”
She was looking at him with a smile shining in her eyes – a smile at once sly and promising and tender. For one sweet moment his heart stood still in his chest, and he felt a fresh surge of his former courage. “She knows, she wants me to speak,” he thought, bracing himself.
They halted on the very edge of the platform, where they were quite alone. Both were excited. Nina was awaiting his reply, enjoying the piquancy of the game she had started, while Bobrov was casting about for words, breathing heavily with agitation. But just then, following the shrill sound of signal horns, a hubbub broke out on the platform.
“I’m waiting, do you hear?” Nina whispered, walking away from Bobrov. “It’s more important for me than you think.”
An express train, wrapped in black smoke, leapt into view from beyond a curve. A few minutes later, clattering over the points, it slowed down smoothly, and pulled up at the platform. At its tail end was a long service carriage shining with fresh blue paint, and the crowd rushed towards it.
The conductors hurried respectfully to open the carriage door; a ladder was unfolded instantly. Red with running and excitement, a frightened look on his face, the station master was urging the workmen uncoupling the service carriage. Kvashnin was one of the principal shareholders of the X Railway and travelled on its branch-lines with greater pomp than was sometimes accorded even to the highest railway officials.
Only four men entered the carriage: Shelkovnikov, Andreas, and two influential Belgian engineers. Kvashnin was sitting in an easy chair, his enormous legs thrown apart and his belly thrust forward. He wore a round felt hat, his fiery hair shining under it; his face, shaved like an actor’s, with flabby jowls and a triple chin, and mottled with big freckles, seemed drowsy and annoyed; his lips were curled in a contemptuous, sour grimace.
With an effort he rose to greet the engineers.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said in a husky, deep voice, holding out his huge chubby hand for them to touch respectfully by turns. “How’s everything at the mill?”
Shelkovnikov began to report in the stiff language of an official account. Everything was all right at the mill, he said. They had been waiting for Vasily Terentyevich’s arrival to blow in the blast-furnace and lay the foundations of new buildings. The workmen and foremen had been hired at suitable rates. The great flow of orders induced the management to start the construction as early as possible.
Kvashnin listened, his face turned away to the window, viewing absent-mindedly the crowd which pressed round the carriage. His face expressed nothing but disgusted weariness.
Suddenly he interrupted the manager to ask, “Look here – who’s that girl?”
Shelkovnikov glanced out of the window.
“There, that one with the yellow feather in her hat.” Kvashnin pointed impatiently.
“Oh, that one?” With an eager look the manager bent to Kvashnin’s ear and whispered mysteriously in French, “She’s the daughter of our warehouse manager. His name is Zinenko.”
Kvashnin nodded heavily. Shelkovnikov resumed his report, but his chief interrupted him again.
“Zinenko?” he drawled thoughtfully, staring out of the window. “Which Zinenko is that? Where have I heard the name?”
“He’s in charge of our warehouse,” Shelkovnikov said again respectfully, with deliberate indifference.
“Oh, yes, now I remember,” said Kvashnin. “They told me about him in Petersburg. All right, go on, please.”
Nina realized by her infallible feminine intuition that just then Kvashnin was looking at her and speaking about her. She turned slightly away, but still Kvashnin could see her face, rosy with coquettish pleasure and showing all its pretty moles.
At last the report was finished, and Kvashnin passed into the roomy glass compartment built at the end of the carriage.
It was a moment which Bobrov thought would have been well worth perpetuating with a good camera. Kvashnin lingered for some reason behind the glass wall, his bulky figure towering above the group that clustered round the carriage entrance, his feet planted wide apart and his face wearing a sullen look, the whole giving the impression of a crudely wrought Japanese idol. The great man’s immobility apparently dismayed those who had come to meet him: the prepared smiles froze on their lips as they stared up at Kvashnin with a servility that bordered on fear. The dashing conductors had stiffened into soldierly postures on either side of the door. Glancing by chance at Nina, Bobrov with a pang noticed on her face the same smile as he saw on the other faces, and the same fear of a savage looking at his idol.
“Is this really nothing but a disinterested, respectful amazement at a yearly income of three hundred thousand rubles?” he thought. “If so, what makes all these people wag their tails so cringingly before a man who never so much as looks at them? Perhaps what’s at work here is some inconceivable psychological law of servility?”
Having stood above for a while, Kvashnin decided to start, and descended the steps, preceded by his belly and carefully supported by the train crew.
In response to the respectful bows of the crowd, which parted quickly to let him pass, he nodded carelessly, thrusting out his thick lower lip, and said in a nasal voice, “Gentlemen, you’re dismissed till tomorrow.”
Before reaching the exit he beckoned to the manager.
“You’ll introduce him to me, Sergei Valerianovich,” he said in an undertone.
“You mean Zinenko?” asked Shelkovnikov obligingly.
“Who else, damn it!” growled Kvashnin, suddenly irritated. “No, not here!” He held the manager by the sleeve as he was about to rush off. “You’ll do it at the mill.”
VII
The laying of the foundations and the blowing in of the new blast-furnace were to start four days after Kvashnin’s arrival. It was planned to celebrate the two events with the utmost pomp, and printed invitations had been sent to the iron and steel mills in the neighbouring towns of Krutogori, Voronino, and Lvovo.
Two more members of the Board of Directors, four Belgian engineers, and several big shareholders arrived from Petersburg after Kvashnin. It was rumoured among the mill personnel that the Board had allocated about two thousand rubles for the celebration dinner, but so far nothing had happened to bear out these rumours, and the contractors had to shoulder the whole burden of buying wines and food.
Luckily the day of the celebration was fine – one of those bright, limpid days of early autumn when the sky seems so intensely blue and deep and the cool air is like exquisite, strong wine. The square pits, dug out for the foundations of the new blower and bessemer, were surrounded by a dense crowd of workers forming a U. In the middle of this living wall, on the edge of the pit, stood plain, unpainted table covered with a white cloth, on which a cross and a gospel-book lay beside a sprinkler and a tin bowl for holy water. The priest, attired in a green chasuble embroidered with golden crosses, was standing a little way off, at the head of fifteen workmen who had volunteered to serve as choristers. The open side of the U was taken up by engineers, contractors, senior foremen, clerks – a motley, bustling crowd of two hundred-odd people. A photographer was busy on the embankment, with a black cloth thrown over his head and the camera.
Ten minutes later Kvashnin arrived at the site in a troika of magnificent greys. He was all alone in the carriage, for no one else could possibly have squeezed in beside him. He was followed by five or six more vehicles. Instinctively the workmen at once recognized him as “the boss” and took off their caps as one man. Kvashnin stalked past them and nodded to the priest.
The hush that fell was broken by the jarring little nasal tenor of the priest, who chanted meekly, “Bless’d be the Lord, for ever and ever.”
“Amen,” the improvised choir responded, harmoniously enough.
The workmen – there were some three thousand of them – crossed themselves broadly, doing it simultaneously as they had greeted Kvashnin, bowed their heads, raised them again, and tossed back their hair. Bobrov could not help looking at them closely. Standing in the two front rows were staid stone-masons, all of them wearing white aprons, and nearly all tow-haired and red bearded; behind them were smelters and forge workers in wide, dark blouses styled after those worn by the French and British workmen, their faces grimy with iron dust which could not be washed off; among them appeared the hook-nosed faces of foreign ouvriers; still farther away, behind the smelters and forge workers, you could catch glimpses of limekiln workers, recognizable from afar by their faces, which seemed to be thickly powdered with flour, and by their inflamed, bloodshot eyes.
Whenever the choir chanted in loud unison, “Save Thy servants from calamity, О Lady!” all the three thousand people assiduously crossed themselves with a soft, monotonous rustle, and bowed deeply. Bobrov fancied that there was something elemental and powerful, and at the same time childish and touching, in that common prayer of the huge grey crowd. Next day the workmen would set about their hard twelve-hour toil. Who knew which of them was already doomed to pay for that toil with his life – to fall from a high scaffold, to be scorched with molten metal, or to be buried under a pile of broken stone or bricks? And was it by any chance this immutable decision of fate that they were thinking of as they made deep bows and tossed back their fair locks, while the choir prayed Our Lady to save her servants from calamity? And in whom but the Virgin could they trust, these big children with stout, simple hearts, these humble heroes who came out daily from their dank, cold mud-huts to carry out their habitual feat of patience and daring?
Such, or almost such, were the thoughts of Bobrov, who had an inclination for vast, poetic pictures; and although he had long since grown out of the habit of praying, a thrill of nervous excitement ran down his spine whenever the priest’s jarring, distant voice was succeeded by the harmonious response of the choir. There was something powerful, submissive, and self-sacrificing in the naive prayer of those simple toilers, who had come together from God knew what far-away regions, snatched from their homes for hard and perilous work.
The service was over. With a careless air Kvashnin threw a gold coin into the pit, but was unable to bend down with the little spade he held, and so Shelkovnikov did it for him. Then the group started for the blast-furnaces whose black towers rose on stone foundations.
The newly-built Fifth Furnace was going “full blast,” to use the technical jargon. A seething white-hot stream of molten slag sent blue sulphur flames darting about as it gushed from a hole pierced in the furnace, about thirty inches above the ground. It flowed down a shoot into ladles placed against the vertical base of the fur-mace, and there hardened into a thick greenish mass like barley sugar. The workmen standing on top of the furnace kept on feeding it with ore and coal, which went up every other minute in trolleys.
The priest sprinkled the furnace on all sides with holy water and hurried off timidly, with the stumbling gait of an old man. The foreman in charge of the furnace, a sinewy, black-faced old man, crossed himself and spat into his palms. His four assistants did the same. Then they picked up a long steel crow-bar, swung it back and forth for a long time and, with one big gasp, rammed it into the lowest part of the furnace. The crow-bar clanked against the clay plug. The onlookers shut their eyes in nervous expectation, and some of them stepped back. The five men struck for the second, third, and fourth time, and suddenly a dazzling-white jet of molten metal burst forth from where the crow-bar had struck. Then the foreman widened the hole by rotating the crow-bar, and the cast iron flowed sluggishly down a sand furrow, taking the colour of fiery ochre. Clusters of big shining stars came flying out of the hole, crackling and melting in the air. Flowing at a seemingly lazy pace, the metal sent out such an unbearable heat that the unaccustomed visitors kept on moving farther and farther back, shielding their faces with their hands.
From the blast-furnaces the engineers made for the blower department. Kvashnin had seen to it that the visiting shareholders got a full view of the enormous mill bustling with activity. He had calculated with absolute accuracy that these gentlemen would be overwhelmed by the wealth of new impressions, and would later report wonders to the general meeting which had sent them. And knowing very well the psychology of business men, he confidently looked forward to a new issue of stock, which would greatly profit him personally and which the general meeting had so far refused.
And the shareholders were overwhelmed, so much so that their heads ached and their knees trembled. In the blower shop, pale with excitement, they heard the air, forced into pipes by four vertical fifteen-foot pistons, rush through them with a roar that rocked the stone walls of the building. Along these massive iron pipes, which were about ten feet in circumference, the air passed through the hot-blast stoves, where burning gases heated it to a thousand degrees, and from there went into the blast-furnace, melting ore and coal with its hot breath. The engineer in charge of the blower department was giving explanations. He bent to the ear of one shareholder after another, and shouted at the top of his voice, straining till his lungs hurt, but the terrific din of the machinery drowned his words and it seemed as if he were just moving his lips, silently and strenuously.
Then Shelkovnikov led the visitors to the puddling-furnace shed, a tall building of such immense length that its far end looked like a barely visible small hole. Along one wall of the shed ran a stone platform with twenty puddling furnaces shaped like railway wagons without wheels. In these furnaces molten iron was mixed with ore and processed into steel, which flowed down pipes and filled high iron moulds – rather like bottomless cases with handles on top – and there hardened to puddles weighing each about three-quarters of a ton. The other side of the shed was laid with rails along which steam cranes moved up and down like obedient, agile animals, with tensile trunks, snorting, hissing, clanking. One of the cranes would seize a mould by the handle and raise it, and a dazzling red bar of steel would slip out. But before the bar could reach the floor, a workman would with extraordinary alacrity sling a wrist-thick chain round it. Another crane would hook the chain, waft away the bar, and put it down next to others on the platform attached to a third crane. The third crane would haul the load to the far end of the shed where a fourth crane, equipped with pincers instead of a hook, would lift the bars from the truck and lower them into the gas furnaces built under the floor. Lastly, a fifth crane would pull them, white with heat, out of the furnaces, put them one by one under a sharp-toothed wheel revolving on a horizontal axle at a terrific speed, and the huge steel bar would be halved in five seconds like a slab of butter. Each half would then go under the twenty-five thousand pound press of a steam hammer, which shingled it as easily as if it were wax. Workmen would at once grab and load the pieces on trolleys and push them away at a run, the red-hot iron sending a wave of glowing heat against all who came that way.
Shelkovnikov went on to show his visitors the rail-rolling mill. A huge bar of red-hot metal would pass through a series of machines, moving from one to another over rollers that were turning under the floor, with only their top parts showing. Squeezed between two steel cylinders revolving in opposite directions, it would force them apart, the rollers trembling with tension. Farther away was a machine with an even smaller space between its cylinders. As it passed through each machine the bar became thinner and longer; after running several times up and down the rail-mill it would take the shape of a red-hot rail, seventy feet long. In control of the complex operations of the fifteen machines was a single man who was posted above the steam engine, on a raised platform not unlike a ship’s bridge. He would pull a handle and all the cylinders and rollers would start to turn one way, then he would push it back and they would turn the other way. When the rail had been stretched to its final length a circular saw would cut it into three parts with a deafening scream, throwing up a myriad of golden sparks.
Now the group proceeded to the turnery where mostly wagon and locomotive wheels were finished. Leather transmission belts coming down from a stout steel shaft running the whole length of the ceiling set in motion two or three hundred machines of the most varied sizes and shapes. There were so many belts criss-crossing in all directions that they seemed like one tangled, vibrating network. The wheels of some of the machines were making twenty revolutions per second, while others were turning so slowly that you could hardly notice it. Steel, iron, and brass shavings thickly littered the floor in thin long spirals. Drilling machines filled the air with an unbearable screeching. The visitors were shown a nut-making machine – rather like two huge steel jaws munching steadily. Two workmen were busy feeding the end of a long red-hot rod into the machine, which bit off its tip regularly to spit out a completely finished nut.
When they left the turnery Shelkovnikov, who had been addressing his explanations exclusively to the shareholders, suggested that they should inspect the nine-hundred h.p. “Compound,” the mill’s pride. By then the gentlemen from Petersburg were sufficiently overwhelmed and exhausted by what they had already seen and heard. Every new impression, far from interesting them, wearied them still more. Their faces were red from the heat of the rail-mill, and their hands and clothes were sooty. They therefore accepted the manager’s invitation with apparent reluctance, and only because they had to maintain the prestige of those who had sent them.
The “Compound” was installed in a separate building, very neat and nice-looking, with bright windows and an inlaid floor. Despite its huge size the machine made hardly any noise. Two pistons, each about thirty feet long, moved smoothly and swiftly up and down their cylinders encased in wood. A wheel twenty feet in diameter, with twelve ropes gliding over it, was revolving just as noiselessly and swiftly. Its sweeping motion sent the hot, dry air rushing through the machine room in strong, regular gusts. The machine supplied power to the blowers and rolling mills and the machinery in the turnery.
Having inspected the “Compound,” the shareholders felt quite certain that their trials were at an end; but the tireless Shelkovnikov obligingly made a fresh suggestion.
“Now, gentlemen, I’ll show you the heart of the mill, its life-centre.”
He dragged rather than led them into the steam-boiler house. But after all that they had seen the “heart of the mill” – twelve cylindrical boilers each thirty-five feet in length and ten feet in height – failed to impress the weary shareholders much. Their thoughts had long been centring round the dinner awaiting them, and they no longer asked questions but nodded with absent-minded indifference at whatever explanations Shelkovnikov gave. When he had finished they sighed with obvious relief and heartily shook hands with him.
Bobrov was now the only one left near the boilers. Standing at the edge of the deep, half-dark stone pit where the furnaces were, he looked for a long time down on the hard work of six men, bare to the waist. It was their duty to stoke the furnaces with coal day and night, without let-up. Now and again the round” iron doors opened with a clang, and Bobrov could see the dazzling white flames roaring and raging in the furnaces. Now and again the half-naked figures of the workmen, withered by fire and black with the coal dust ingrained in their skin, bent down, all the muscles and vertebrae standing out on their backs. Now and again their lean, wiry hands scooped up a shovelful of coal and thrust it into the blazing orifice with a swift, deft movement. Another two workmen, standing above, were kept as busy shovelling down fresh coal from the huge black piles round the boiler house. There was something depressing and inhuman, Bobrov thought, in the stokers’ endless work. It seemed as if a supernatural power had chained them for life to those yawning maws and they must, under penalty of a terrible death, tirelessly feed the insatiable, gluttonous monster.
“Watching them fattening your Moloch, are you?” said a cheerful, good-humoured voice behind Bobrov’s back.
Bobrov started and all but fell into the pit. He was staggered by the unexpected coincidence of the doctor’s facetious exclamation with his own thoughts. For a long time after he regained his composure he could not stop wondering at the strange coincidence. He was always interested and mystified to hear someone beside him suddenly bring up what he had just been reading or thinking about.
“Did I frighten you, old chap?” said the doctor, looking closely at Bobrov. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes – a little. You came up so quietly – it was quite a surprise.”
“Andrei Ilyich, you’d better look after your nerves. They’re no good at all. Take my advice: ask for leave of absence and go somewhere abroad. Why worry yourself here? Enjoy six months or so of easy life; drink good wine, ride a lot, try l’amour.”
The doctor walked to the edge of the furnace pit and glanced down.
“A regular inferno!” he cried. “How much would those little samovars weigh? Close to fifteen tons each, I should think?”
“A bit more than that. Upwards of twenty-five tons.”
“Oh! And suppose it occurred to one of them to – er – pop? It would make a fine sight, wouldn’t it?”
“It certainly would, doctor. All these buildings would probably be razed to the ground.”
Goldberg shook his head and whistled significantly.
“But what might cause such a thing?”
“Oh, there may be many causes; but more often than not this is what happens: when there’s very little water left in the boiler, its walls grow hotter and hotter, till they’re almost red-hot. If you let water in at a moment like that an enormous quantity of steam would form at once, the walls wouldn’t be able to stand the pressure, and the boiler would blow up.”
“So you could do it on purpose?”
“Any time you wish. Would you like to try? When the water runs quite low in the gauge, you only have to turn that small round lever. That’s all there is to it.”
Bobrov was jesting, but his tone was strangely earnest, and there was a stern, unhappy look in his eyes.
“Damn it,” the doctor said to himself, “he’s a fine chap all right, but cranky just the same.”
“Why didn’t you go to the dinner, Andrei Ilyich?” he asked, stepping back from the pit. “You should at least see what a winter garden they’ve made of the lab. And the spread – you’d be amazed.”
