Disregarding the melee behind me, I leaped through the wreckage with
the other raiders. The steel door barred all further progress with its
cold blue impassibility. How were we to surmount this last and most
formidable barrier?
I turned in time to see Kennedy and O'Connor hurrying up the steps
with a huge tank studded with bolts like a boiler, while two other men
carried a second tank.
"There," ordered Craig, "set the oxygen there," as he placed his own
tank on the opposite side.
Out of the tanks stout tubes led, with stop-cocks and gages at the
top. From a case under his arm Kennedy produced a curious arrangement
like a huge hook, with a curved neck and a sharp beak. Really it
consisted of two metal tubes which ran into a sort of cylinder, or
mixing chamber, above the nozzle, while parallel to them ran a third
separate tube with a second nozzle of its own. Quickly he joined the
ends of the tubes from the tanks to the metal hook, the oxygen-tank
being joined to two of the tubes of the hook, and the second tank
being joined to the other. With a match he touched the nozzle
gingerly. Instantly a hissing, spitting noise followed, and an intense
blinding needle of flame.
"Now for the oxy-acetylene blowpipe," cried Kennedy as he advanced
toward the steel door. "We'll make short work of this."
Almost as he said it, the steel beneath the blowpipe became
incandescent.
Just to test it, he cut off the head of a three-quarter-inch steel
rivet--taking about a quarter of a minute to do it.
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