And its body odor stung the nostrils.

All night long it panted with its heavy labors--as if the jinns that lifted those giant pump beams were vying with one another in a desperate endeavor.
They were, for a fact.

Haste, avarice, an arduous diligence, was in the very air.
Gray stared and marveled, for imagination was not lacking in him.

Those derricks with their fires were high altars upon which were heaped ten thousand hopes and prayers.

Altars of Avarice! Towers of Greed! That is what they were.
He marvelled, too, at the extremes these last few days had brought him; at the long cry from the luxurious Burlington Notch to this primitive land of fire worshipers.