twelve o'clock
Among them was the brisk Bilsby , Tom Hunter , Colonel Blomsberry , Major Elphinstone , General Morgan , and _ tutti quanti _ , to whom the casting of the Columbiad was a personal business . J.T. Maston constituted himself their cicerone ; he did not excuse them any detail ; he led them about everywhere , through the magazines , workshops , amongst the machines , and he forced them to visit the 1,200 furnaces one after the other . At the end of the 1,200 th visit they were rather sick of it . The casting was to take place precisely at twelve o'clock ; the evening before each furnace had been charged with 114,000 lbs . of metal in bars disposed crossway to each other so that the warm air could circulate freely amongst them . Since early morning the 1,200 chimneys had been pouring forth volumes of flames into the atmosphere , and the soil was shaken convulsively . There were as many pounds of coal to be burnt as metal to be melted .