Goujet, standing up watching a bar of iron heating, was waiting with the tongs in his hand.

The bright glare illuminated him without a shadow--sleeves rolled back, shirt neck open, bare arms and chest.

When the bar was at white heat he seized it with the tongs and cut it with a hammer on the anvil, in pieces of equal length, as though he had been gently breaking pieces of glass.

Then he put the pieces back into the fire, from which he took them one by one to work them into shape.

He was forging hexagonal rivets.