"No one, so far as I know," answered the man addressed.
"Have you seen Bob Jarvis anywhere about?"
"He was my partner. He was working on number eight when it blew up."
"Then you'll need a basket to gather him up," was the cheerful answer of the mill hand. "The last time a pit exploded here we lost twelve men. We found the pieces of them, but somehow we never were able to put them together. The pieces wouldn't fit, nohow."
Steve turned away. The lad's face was drawn and white, partly from the pain of his burns and partly from anxiety for Jarvis.
"Ignatz!" he called, observing the Pole darting across to the furnaces.
The lad halted sharply and glanced around to see who was calling him. He caught Steve's eye and hurried over.
"Mebby Bob him run away," suggested the Pole.
"No, Ignatz; he is not that kind. He is here somewhere and something has happened to him or we should have seen him somewhere about. He was standing on the edge of the pit at the time it exploded."
"I see him a minute before. He put too much water on," added the boy, with a shake of the head. "Bad, bad! Somebody tell him do that."
Rush attached no especial significance to the suggestion at the moment. Later on, the words of the faithful Pole came back to him fraught with meaning.
"He must have been thrown up into the air. Perhaps he is down in the pit there buried under the slag now," said Rush, a sudden, startled expression flashing into his eyes.
"Look! Look!" cried the Pole, dancing up and down and pointing excitedly up above their heads into the thin cloud of smoke that hovered over them.
Steve looked. His heart sank within him as he did so and his head began to whirl dizzily.
"Bob, him there! Bob, him there!" cried Ignatz. "See, see!"
On a girder, a huge steel truss some fifteen feet above their heads, and a little to one side of the centre, lay a limp figure, apparently ready to topple off at the slightest jar. The face of the figure up there was not visible, for it was flattened on the girder, while the arms and limbs hung over limp and motionless.
"It's Bob!" gasped the Iron Boy. "Help me, Ignatz! We must get him down."
Young Brodsky did not wait to consider the matter. He darted away, followed by Steve. To reach the figure on the girder the lads were obliged to climb the upright of a big automatic crane that was used for conveying heavy pieces of iron from one end of the building to the other. Ordinarily the boys would have been stopped, but in the excitement no one paid any heed to them as they shinned up the iron column, Steve in the lead, Brodsky so close behind him that now and then Rush's heels grazed the Pole's face.