It was a brilliant sight. The terrific heat from the first nozzle
caused the metal to glow under the torch as if in an open-hearth
furnace. From the second nozzle issued a stream of oxygen, under
which the hot metal of the door was completely consumed.
The force of the blast, as the compressed oxygen and acetylene
were expelled, carried a fine spray of the disintegrated metal
visibly before it. And yet it was not a big hole that it made--
scarcely an eighth of an inch wide, but clean and sharp as if a
buzz-saw were eating its way through a plank of white-pine.
With tense muscles Kennedy held this terrific engine of
destruction and moved it as easily as if it had been a mere pencil
of light. He was the calmest of all of us as we crowded about him,
but at a respectful distance.
"I suppose you know," he remarked hastily, never pausing for a
moment in his work, "that acetylene is composed of carbon and
hydrogen. As it burns at the end of the nozzle it is broken into
carbon and hydrogen--the carbon gives the high temperature and the
hydrogen forms a cone that protects the end of the blow-pipe from
being itself burnt up."
"But isn't it dangerous?" I asked, amazed at the skill with which
he handled the blow-pipe.
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