beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal, inky-black, and
crowned with smoke and fitful flames, stood the great cylinders of
the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces, the central edifices of the big
ironworks of which Horrocks was the manager. They stood heavy and
threatening, full of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething
molten iron, and about the feet of them rattled the rolling-mills,
and the steam hammer beat heavily and splashed the white iron
sparks hither and thither. Even as they looked, a truckful of fuel
was shot into one of the giants, and the red flames gleamed out,
and a confusion of smoke and black dust came boiling upwards
towards the sky.

"Certainly you get some fine effects of colour with your
furnaces," said Raut, breaking a silence that had become
apprehensive.

Horrocks grunted. He stood with his hands in his pockets,
frowning down at the dim steaming railway and the busy ironworks
beyond, frowning as if he were thinking out some knotty problem.

Raut glanced at him and away again. "At present your
moonlight effect is hardly ripe," he continued, looking upward.
"The moon is still smothered by the vestiges of daylight."

Horrocks stared at him with the expression of a man who has
suddenly awakened. "Vestiges of daylight? . . . . Of course, of
course." He too looked up at the moon, pale still in the midsummer
sky. "Come along," he said suddenly, and, gripping Raut's arm in
his hand, made a move towards the path that dropped from them to
the railway.