Almost at the same moment as Mouque and Bataille were disappearing at

the end of a gallery, there was a crackling in the air, followed by

the prolonged noise of a fall. It was a piece of tubbing which had got

loose and was falling a hundred and eighty metres down, rebounding

against the walls. Pierron and the other porters were able to get

out of the way, and the oak plank only smashed an empty tram. At

the same time, a mass of water, the leaping flood of a broken dyke,

rushed down. Dansaert proposed to go up and examine; but, while he was

still speaking, another piece rolled down. And in terror before the

threatening catastrophe, he no longer hesitated, but gave the order to

go up, sending captains to warn the men in their stalls.

Then a terrible hustling began. From every gallery rows of workers

came rushing up, trying to take the cages by assault. They crushed

madly against each other in order to be taken up at once. Some who had

thought of trying the ladder passage came down again shouting that it

was already stopped up. That was the terror they all felt each time

that the cage rose; this time it was able to pass, but who knew if it

would be able to pass again in the midst of the obstacles obstructing

the shaft? The downfall must be continuing above, for a series of low

detonations was heard, the planks were splitting and bursting amid

the continuous and increasing roar of a storm. One cage soon became

useless, broken in and no longer sliding between the guides, which

were doubtless broken. The other jarred to such a degree that the

cable would certainly break soon. And there remained a hundred men

to be taken up, all panting, clinging to one another, bleeding and

half-drowned. Two were killed by falls of planking. A third, who had

seized the cage, fell back fifty metres up and disappeared in the sump.

Dansaert, however, was trying to arrange matters in an orderly manner.

Armed with a pick he threatened to open the skull of the first man who

refused to obey; and he tried to arrange them in file, shouting that

the porters were to go up last after having sent up their mates. He was

not listened to, and he had to prevent the pale and cowardly Pierron

from entering among the first. At each departure he pushed him aside

with a blow. But his own teeth were chattering, a minute more and he

would be swallowed up; everything was smashing up there, a flood had

broken loose, a murderous rain of scaffolding. A few men were still

running up when, mad with fear, he jumped into a tram, allowing Pierron

to jump in behind him. The cage rose.

At this moment the gang to which Étienne and Chaval belonged had just

reached the pit-eye. They saw the cage disappear and rushed forward,

but they had to draw back from the final downfall of the tubbing; the

shaft was stopped up and the cage would not come down again. Catherine

was sobbing, and Chaval was choked with shouting oaths. There were

twenty of them; were those bloody bosses going to abandon them thus?

Father Mouque, who had brought back Bataille without hurrying, was

still holding him by the bridle, both of them stupefied, the man and

the beast, in the face of this rapid flow of the inundation. The water

was already rising to their thighs. Étienne in silence, with clenched

teeth, supported Catherine between his arms. And the twenty yelled with

their faces turned up, obstinately gazing at the shaft like imbeciles,

that shifting hole which was belching out a flood and from which no

help could henceforth come to them.

At the surface, Dansaert, on arriving, perceived Négrel running up. By

some fatality, Madame Hennebeau had that morning delayed him on rising,

turning over the leaves of catalogues for the purchase of wedding

presents. It was ten o'clock.

"Well! what's happening, then?" he shouted from afar.

"The pit is ruined," replied the head captain.

And he described the catastrophe in a few stammered words, while the

engineer incredulously shrugged his shoulders. What! could tubbing

be demolished like that? They were exaggerating; he would make an

examination.

"I suppose no one has been left at the bottom?"

Dansaert was confused. No, no one; at least, so he hoped. But some of

the men might have been delayed.

"But," said Négrel, "what in the name of creation have you come up for,

then? You can't leave your men!"

He immediately gave orders to count the lamps. In the morning three

hundred and twenty-two had been distributed, and now only two hundred

and fifty-five could be found; but several men acknowledged that in

the hustling and panic they had dropped theirs and left them behind.

An attempt was made to call over the men, but it was impossible to

establish the exact number. Some of the miners had gone away, others

did not hear their names. No one was agreed as to the number of the

missing mates. It might be twenty, perhaps forty. And the engineer

could only make out one thing with certainty: there were men down

below, for their yells could be distinguished through the sound of the

water and the fallen scaffolding, on leaning over the mouth of the

shaft.

Négrel's first care was to send for M. Hennebeau, and to try to close

the pit; but it was already too late. The colliers who had rushed to

the Deux-Cent-Quarante settlement, as though pursued by the cracking

tubbing, had frightened the families; and bands of women, old men, and

little ones came running up, shaken by cries and sobs. They had to be

pushed back, and a line of overseers was formed to keep them off, for

they would have interfered with the operations. Many of the men who

had come up from the shaft remained there stupidly without thinking

of changing their clothes, riveted by fear before this terrible hole

in which they had nearly remained for ever. The women, rushing wildly

around them, implored them for names. Was So-and-so among them? and

that one? and this one? They did not know, they stammered; they

shuddered terribly, and made gestures like madmen, gestures which

seemed to be pushing away some abominable vision which was always

present to them. The crowd rapidly increased, and lamentations arose

from the roads. And up there on the pit-bank, in Bonnemort's cabin, on

the ground was seated a man, Souvarine, who had not gone away, who was

looking on.

"The names! the names!" cried the women, with voices choked by tears.

Négrel appeared for a moment, and said hurriedly:

"As soon as we know the names they shall be given out, but nothing is

lost so far: every one will be saved. I am going down."

Then, silent with anguish, the crowd waited. The engineer, in fact,

with quiet courage was preparing to go down. He had had the cage

unfastened, giving orders to replace it at the end of the cable by a

tub; and as he feared that the water would extinguish his lamp, he had

another fastened beneath the tub, which would protect it.

Several captains, trembling and with white, disturbed faces, assisted

in these preparations.

"You will come with me, Dansaert," said Négrel, abruptly.

Then, when he saw them all without courage, and that the head captain

was tottering, giddy with terror, he pushed him aside with a movement

of contempt.

"No, you will be in my way. I would rather go alone."

He was already in the narrow bucket, which swayed at the end of the

cable; and holding his lamp in one hand and the signal-cord in the

other, he shouted to the engine-man:

"Gently!"

The engine set the drums in movement, and Négrel disappeared in the

gulf, from which the yells of the wretches below still arose.

At the upper part nothing had moved. He found that the tubbing here

was in good condition. Balanced in the middle of the shaft he lighted

up the walls as he turned round; the leaks between the joints were

so slight that his lamp did not suffer. But at three hundred metres,

when he reached the lower tubbing, the lamp was extinguished, as he

expected, for a jet had filled the tub. After that he was only able

to see by the hanging lamp which preceded him in the darkness, and,

in spite of his courage, he shuddered and turned pale in the face of

the horror of the disaster. A few pieces of timber alone remained;

the others had fallen in with their frames. Behind, enormous cavities

had been hollowed out, and the yellow sand, as fine as flour, was

flowing in considerable masses; while the waters of the Torrent,

that subterranean sea with its unknown tempests and shipwrecks, were

discharging in a flow like a weir. He went down lower, lost in the

midst of these chasms which continued to multiply, beaten and turned

round by the waterspout of the springs, so badly lighted by the red

star of the lamp moving on below, that he seemed to distinguish the

roads and squares of some destroyed town far away in the play of the

great moving shadows. No human work was any longer possible. His only

remaining hope was to attempt to save the men in peril. As he sank down

he heard the cries becoming louder, and he was obliged to stop; an

impassable obstacle barred the shaft--a mass of scaffolding, the broken

joists of the guides, the split brattices entangled with the metal-work

torn from the pump. As he looked on for a long time with aching heart,

the yelling suddenly ceased. No doubt, the rapid rise of the water had

forced the wretches to flee into the galleries, if, indeed, the flood

had not already filled their mouths.

Négrel resigned himself to pulling the signal-cord as a sign to

draw up. Then he had himself stopped again. He could not conceive

the cause of this sudden accident. He wished to investigate it, and

examined those pieces of the tubbing which were still in place. At a

distance the tears and cuts in the wood had surprised him. His lamp,

drowned in dampness, was going out, and, touching with his fingers, he

clearly recognized the marks of the saw and of the wimble--the whole

abominable labour of destruction. Evidently this catastrophe had been

intentionally produced. He was stupefied, and the pieces of timber,

cracking and falling down with their frames in a last slide, nearly

carried him with them. His courage fled. The thought of the man who had

done that made his hair stand on end, and froze him with a supernatural

fear of evil, as though, mixed with the darkness, the men were still

there paying for his immeasurable crime. He shouted and shook the cord

furiously; and it was, indeed, time, for he perceived that the upper

tubbing, a hundred metres higher, was in its turn beginning to move.

The joints were opening, losing their oakum caulking, and streams were

rushing through. It was now only a question of hours before the tubbing

would all fall down.

At the surface M. Hennebeau was anxiously waiting for Négrel.

"Well, what?" he asked.

But the engineer was choked, and could not speak; he felt faint.

"It is not possible; such a thing was never seen. Have you examined?"

He nodded with a cautious look. He refused to talk in the presence of

some captains who were listening, and led his uncle ten metres away,

and not thinking this far enough, drew still farther back; then, in a

low whisper, he at last told of the outrage, the torn and sawn planks,

the pit bleeding at the neck and groaning. Turning pale, the manager

also lowered his voice, with that instinctive need of silence in face

of the monstrosity of great orgies and great crimes. It was useless to

look as though they were trembling before the ten thousand Montsou men;

later on they would see. And they both continued whispering, overcome

at the thought that a man had had the courage to go down, to hang in

the midst of space, to risk his life twenty times over in his terrible

task. They could not even understand this mad courage in destruction;

they refused to believe, in spite of the evidence, just as we doubt

those stories of celebrated escapes of prisoners who fly through

windows thirty metres above the ground.

When M. Hennebeau came back to the captains a nervous spasm was drawing

his face. He made a gesture of despair, and gave orders that the mine

should be evacuated at once. It was a kind of funeral procession, in

silent abandonment, with glances thrown back at those great masses of

bricks, empty and still standing, but which nothing henceforth could

save.

And as the manager and the engineer came down last from the

receiving-room, the crowd met them with its clamour, repeating

obstinately:

"The names! the names! Tell us the names!"

Maheude was now there, among the women. She recollected the noise in

the night; her daughter and the lodger must have gone away together,

and they were certainly down at the bottom. And after having cried that

it was a good thing, that they deserved to stay there, the heartless

cowards, she had run up, and was standing in the first row, trembling

with anguish. Besides, she no longer dared to doubt; the discussion

going on around her informed her as to the names of those who were

down. Yes, yes, Catherine was among them, Étienne also--a mate had seen

them. But there was not always agreement with regard to the others.

No, not this one; on the contrary, that one, perhaps Chaval, with

whom, however, a trammer declared that he had ascended. The Levaque

and Pierronne, although none of their people were in danger, cried out

and lamented as loudly as the others. Zacharie, who had come up among

the first, in spite of his inclination to make fun of everything had

weepingly kissed his wife and mother, and remained near the latter,

quivering, and showing an unexpected degree of affection for his

sister, refusing to believe that she was below so long as the bosses

made no authoritative statement.

"The names! the names! For pity's sake, the names!"

Négrel, who was exhausted, shouted to the overseers:

"Can't you make them be still? It's enough to kill one with vexation!

We don't know the names!"

Two hours passed away in this manner. In the first terror no one had

thought of the other shaft at the old Réquillart mine, M. Hennebeau was

about to announce that the rescue would be attempted from that side,

when a rumour ran round: five men had just escaped the inundation by

climbing up the rotten ladders of the old unused passage, and Father

Mouque was named. This caused surprise, for no one knew he was below.

But the narrative of the five who had escaped increased the weeping;

fifteen mates had not been able to follow them, having gone astray, and

been walled up by falls. And it was no longer possible to assist them,

for there were already ten metres of water in Réquillart. All the names

were known, and the air was filled with the groans of a slaughtered

multitude.

"Will you make them be still?" Négrel repeated furiously. "Make them

draw back! Yes, yes, to a hundred metres! There is danger; push them

back, push them back!"

It was necessary to struggle against these poor people. They were

imagining all sorts of misfortunes, and they had to be driven away so

that the deaths might be concealed; the captains explained to them that

the shaft would destroy the whole mine. This idea rendered them mute

with terror, and they at last allowed themselves to be driven back step

by step; the guards, however, who kept them back had to be doubled, for

they were fascinated by the spot and continually returned. Thousands of

people were hustling each other along the road; they were running up

from all the settlements, and even from Montsou. And the man above, on

the pit-bank, the fair man with the girlish face, smoked cigarettes to

occupy himself, keeping his clear eyes fixed on the pit.

Then the wait began. It was midday; no one had eaten, but no one moved

away. In the misty sky, of a dirty grey colour, rusty clouds were

slowly passing by. A big dog, behind Rasseneur's hedge, was barking

furiously without cessation, irritated by the living breath of the

crowd. And the crowd had gradually spread over the neighbouring ground,

forming a circle at a hundred metres round the pit. The Voreux arose in

the centre of the great space. There was not a soul there, not a sound;

it was a desert. The windows and the doors, left open, showed the

abandonment within; a forgotten ginger cat, divining the peril in this

solitude, jumped from a staircase and disappeared. No doubt the stoves

of the boilers were scarcely extinguished, for the tall brick chimney

gave out a light smoke beneath the dark clouds; while the weathercock

on the steeple creaked in the wind with a short, shrill cry, the only

melancholy voice of these vast buildings which were about to die.

At two o'clock nothing had moved, M. Hennebeau, Négrel, and other

engineers who had hastened up, formed a group in black coats and hats

standing in front of the crowd; and they, too, did not move away,

though their legs were aching with fatigue, and they were feverish and

ill at their impotence in the face of such a disaster, only whispering

occasional words as though at a dying person's bedside. The upper

tubbing must nearly all have fallen in, for sudden echoing sounds could

be heard as of deep broken falls, succeeded by silence. The wound was

constantly enlarging; the landslip which had begun below was rising

and approaching the surface. Négrel was seized by nervous impatience;

he wanted to see, and he was already advancing alone into this awful

void when he was seized by the shoulders. What was the good? he could

prevent nothing. An old miner, however, circumventing the overseers,

rushed into the shed; but he quietly reappeared, he had gone for his

sabots.

Three o'clock struck. Still nothing. A falling shower had soaked the

crowd, but they had not withdrawn a step. Rasseneur's dog had begun

to bark again. And it was at twenty minutes past three only that the

first shock was felt. The Voreux trembled, but continued solid and

upright. Then a second shock followed immediately, and a long cry came

from open mouths; the tarred screening-shed, after having tottered

twice, had fallen down with a terrible crash. Beneath the enormous

pressure the structures broke and jarred each other so powerfully that

sparks leapt out. From this moment the earth continued to tremble, the

shocks succeeded one another, subterranean downfalls, the rumbling of a

volcano in eruption. Afar the dog was no longer barking, but he howled

plaintively as though announcing the oscillations which he felt coming;

and the women, the children, all these people who were looking on,

could not keep back a clamour of distress at each of these blows which

shook them. In less than ten minutes the slate roof of the steeple fell

in, the receiving-room and the engine-rooms were split open, leaving a

considerable breach. Then the sounds ceased, the downfall stopped, and

there was again deep silence.

For an hour the Voreux remained thus, broken into, as though bombarded

by an army of barbarians. There was no more crying out; the enlarged

circle of spectators merely looked on. Beneath the piled-up beams of

the sifting-shed, fractured tipping cradles could be made out with

broken and twisted hoppers. But the rubbish had especially accumulated

at the receiving-room, where there had been a rain of bricks, and large

portions of wall and masses of plaster had fallen in. The iron scaffold

which bore the pulleys had bent, half-buried in the pit; a cage was

still suspended, a torn cable-end was hanging; then there was a hash

of trams, metal plates, and ladders. By some chance the lamp cabin

remained standing, exhibiting on the left its bright rows of little

lamps. And at the end of its disembowelled chamber, the engine could be

seen seated squarely on its massive foundation of masonry; its copper

was shining and its huge steel limbs seemed to possess indestructible

muscles. The enormous crank, bent in the air, looked like the powerful

knee of some giant quietly reposing in his strength.

After this hour of respite, M. Hennebeau's hopes began to rise. The

movement of the soil must have come to an end, and there would be

some chance of saving the engine and the remainder of the buildings.

But he would not yet allow any one to approach, considering another

half-hour's patience desirable. This waiting became unbearable; the

hope increased the anguish and all hearts were beating quickly. A dark

cloud, growing large at the horizon, hastened the twilight, a sinister

dayfall over this wreck of earth's tempests. Since seven o'clock they

had been there without moving or eating.

And suddenly, as the engineers were cautiously advancing, a supreme

convulsion of the soil put them to flight. Subterranean detonations

broke out; a whole monstrous artillery was cannonading in the gulf. At

the surface, the last buildings were tipped over and crushed. At first

a sort of whirlpool carried away the rubbish from the sifting-shed and

the receiving-room. Next, the boiler building burst and disappeared.

Then it was the low square tower, where the pumping-engine was

groaning, which fell on its face like a man mown down by a bullet.

And then a terrible thing was seen; the engine, dislocated from its

massive foundation, with broken limbs was struggling against death; it

moved, it straightened its crank, its giant's knee, as though to rise;

but, crushed and swallowed up, it was dying. The chimney alone, thirty

metres high, still remained standing, though shaken, like a mast in the

tempest. It was thought that it would be crushed to fragments and fly

to powder, when suddenly it sank in one block, drunk down by the earth,

melted like a colossal candle; and nothing was left, not even the point

of the lightning conductor. It was done for; the evil beast crouching

in this hole, gorged with human flesh, was no longer breathing with its

thick, long respiration. The Voreux had been swallowed whole by the

abyss.

The crowd rushed away yelling. The women hid their eyes as they ran.

Terror drove the men along like a pile of dry leaves. They wished not

to shout and they shouted, with swollen breasts, and arms in the air,

before the immense hole which had been hollowed out. This crater, as

of an extinct volcano, fifteen metres deep, extended from the road

to the canal for a space of at least forty metres. The whole square

of the mine had followed the buildings, the gigantic platforms, the

foot-bridges with their rails, a complete train of trams, three wagons;

without counting the wood supply, a forest of cut timber, gulped

down like straw. At the bottom it was only possible to distinguish a

confused mass of beams, bricks, iron, plaster, frightful remains, piled

up, entangled, soiled in the fury of the catastrophe. And the hole

became larger, cracks started from the edges, reaching afar, across the

fields. A fissure ascended as far as Rasseneur's bar, and his front

wall had cracked. Would the settlement itself pass into it? How far

ought they to flee to reach shelter at the end of this abominable day,

beneath this leaden cloud which also seemed about to crush the earth?

A cry of pain escaped Négrel. M. Hennebeau, who had drawn back, was

in tears. The disaster was not complete; one bank of the canal gave

way, and the canal emptied itself like one bubbling sheet through one

of the cracks. It disappeared there, falling like a cataract down a

deep valley. The mine drank down this river; the galleries would now

be submerged for years. Soon the crater was filled and a lake of muddy

water occupied the place where once stood the Voreux, like one of

those lakes beneath which sleep accursed towns. There was a terrified

silence, and nothing now could be heard but the fall of this water

rumbling in the bowels of the earth.

Then on the shaken pit-bank Souvarine rose up. He had recognized

Maheude and Zacharie sobbing before this downfall, the weight of which

was so heavy on the heads of the wretches who were in agony beneath.

And he threw down his last cigarette; he went away, without looking

back, into the now dark night. Afar his shadow diminished and mingled

with the darkness. He was going over there, to the unknown. He was

going tranquilly to extermination, wherever there might be dynamite

to blow up towns and men. He will be there, without doubt, when the

middle class in agony shall hear the pavement of the streets bursting

up beneath their feet.

CHAPTER IV

On the night that followed the collapse of the Voreux M. Hennebeau

started for Paris, wishing to inform the directors in person before the

newspapers published the news. And when he returned on the following

day he appeared to be quite calm, with his usual correct administrative

air. He had evidently freed himself from responsibility; he did not

appear to have decreased in favour. On the contrary, the decree

appointing him officer of the Legion of Honour was signed twenty-four

hours afterwards.

But if the manager remained safe, the Company was tottering beneath the

terrible blow. It was not the few million francs that had been lost,

it was the wound in the flank, the deep incessant fear of the morrow

in face of this massacre of one of their mines. The Company was so

impressed that once more it felt the need of silence. What was the good

of stirring up this abomination? If the villain were discovered, why

make a martyr of him in order that his awful heroism might turn other

heads, and give birth to a long line of incendiaries and murderers?

Besides, the real culprit was not suspected. The Company came to think

that there was an army of accomplices, not being able to believe that

a single man could have had courage and strength for such a task; and

it was precisely this thought which weighed on them, this thought of

an ever-increasing threat to the existence of their mines. The manager

had received orders to organize a vast system of espionage, and then

to dismiss quietly, one by one, the dangerous men who were suspected

of having had a hand in the crime. They contented themselves with this

method of purification--a prudent and politic method.

There was only one immediate dismissal, that of Dansaert, the head

captain. Ever since the scandal at Pierronne's house he had become

impossible. A pretext was made of his attitude in danger, the cowardice

of a captain abandoning his men. This was also a prudent sop thrown to

the miners, who hated him.

Among the public, however, many rumours had circulated, and the

directors had to send a letter of correction to one newspaper,

contradicting a story in which mention was made of a barrel of powder

lighted by the strikers. After a rapid inquiry the Government inspector

had concluded that there had been a natural rupture of the tubbing,

occasioned by the piling up of the soil; and the Company had preferred

to be silent, and to accept the blame of a lack of superintendence. In

the Paris press, after the third day, the catastrophe had served to

increase the stock of general news; nothing was talked of but the men

perishing at the bottom of the mine, and the telegrams published every

morning were eagerly read. At Montsou people grew pale and speechless

at the very name of the Voreux, and a legend had formed which made the

boldest tremble as they whispered it. The whole country showed great

pity for the victims; visits were organized to the destroyed pit, and

whole families hastened up to shudder at the ruins which lay so heavily

over the heads of the buried wretches.

Deneulin, who had been appointed divisional engineer, came into the

midst of the disaster on beginning his duties; and his first care was

to turn the canal back into its bed, for this torrent increased the

damage every hour. Extensive works were necessary, and he at once

set a hundred men to construct a dyke. Twice over the impetuosity of

the stream carried away the first dams. Now pumps were set up and a

furious struggle was going on; step by step the vanished soil was being

violently reconquered.

But the rescue of the engulfed miners was a still more absorbing work.

Négrel was appointed to attempt a supreme effort, and arms were not

lacking to help him; all the colliers rushed to offer themselves in an

outburst of brotherhood. They forgot the strike, they did not trouble

themselves at all about payment; they might get nothing, they only

asked to risk their lives as soon as there were mates in danger of

death. They were all there with their tools, quivering as they waited

to know where they ought to strike. Many of them, sick with fright

after the accident, shaken by nervous tremors, soaked in cold sweats,

and the prey of continual nightmares, got up in spite of everything,

and were as eager as any in their desire to fight against the earth, as

though they had a revenge to take on it. Unfortunately, the difficulty

began when the question arose, What could be done? how could they go

down? from what side could they attack the rocks?

Négrel's opinion was that not one of the unfortunate people was alive;

the fifteen had surely perished, drowned or suffocated. But in these

mine catastrophes the rule is always to assume that buried men are

alive, and he acted on this supposition. The first problem which he

proposed to himself was to decide where they could have taken refuge.

The captains and old miners whom he consulted were agreed on one

point: in the face of the rising water the men had certainly come up

from gallery to gallery to the highest cuttings, so that they were,

without doubt, driven to the end of some upper passages. This agreed

with Father Mouque's information, and his confused narrative even

gave reason to suppose that in the wild flight the band had separated

into smaller groups, leaving fugitives on the road at every level.

But the captains were not unanimous when the discussion of possible

attempts at rescue arose. As the passages nearest to the surface were

a hundred and fifty metres down, there could be no question of sinking

a shaft. Réquillart remained the one means of access, the only point

by which they could approach. The worst was that the old pit, now

also inundated, no longer communicated with the Voreux; and above

the level of the water only a few ends of galleries belonging to the

first level were left free. The pumping process would require years,

and the best plan would be to visit these galleries and ascertain if

any of them approached the submerged passages at the end of which the

distressed miners were suspected to be. Before logically arriving at

this point, much discussion had been necessary to dispose of a crowd of

impracticable plans.

Négrel now began to stir up the dust of the archives; he discovered

the old plans of the two pits, studied them, and decided on the points

at which their investigations ought to be carried on. Gradually this

hunt excited him; he was, in his turn, seized by a fever of devotion,

in spite of his ironical indifference to men and things. The first

difficulty was in going down at Réquillart; it was necessary to clear

out the rubbish from the mouth of the shaft, to cut down the mountain

ash, and raze the sloes and the hawthorns; they had also to repair

the ladders. Then they began to feel around. The engineer, having

gone down with ten workmen, made them strike the iron of their tools

against certain parts of the seam which he pointed out to them; and in

deep silence they each placed an ear to the coal, listening for any

distant blows to reply. But they went in vain through every practicable

gallery; no echo returned to them. Their embarrassment increased. At

what spot should they cut into the bed? Towards whom should they go,

since no once appeared to be there? They persisted in seeking, however,

notwithstanding the exhaustion produced by their growing anxiety.

On the first day, Maheude came in the morning to Réquillart. She sat

down on a beam in front of the shaft, and did not stir from it till

evening. When a man came up, she rose and questioned him with her eyes:

Nothing? No, nothing! And she sat down again, and waited still, without

a word, with hard, fixed face. Jeanlin also, seeing that his den was

invaded, prowled around with the frightened air of a beast of prey

whose burrow will betray his booty. He thought of the little soldier

lying beneath the rocks, fearing lest they should trouble his sound

sleep; but that side of the mine was beneath the water, and, besides,

their investigations were directed more to the left, in the west

gallery. At first, Philoméne had also come, accompanying Zacharie, who

was one of the gang; then she became wearied at catching cold, without

need or result, and went back to the settlement, dragging through her

days, a limp, indifferent woman, occupied from morning to night in

coughing. Zacharie on the contrary, lived for nothing else; he would

have devoured the soil to get back his sister. At night he shouted out

that he saw, her, he heard her, very lean from hunger, her chest sore

with calling for help. Twice he had tried to dig without orders, saying

that it was there, that he was sure of it. The engineer would not let

him go down any more, and he would not go away from the pit, from which

he was driven off; he could not even sit down and wait near his mother,

he was so deeply stirred by the need to act, which drove him constantly

on.

It was the third day. Négrel, in despair, had resolved to abandon the

attempt in the evening. At midday, after lunch, when he came back with

his men to make one last effort, he was surprised to see Zacharie, red

and gesticulating, come out of the mine shouting:

"She's there! She's replied to me! Come along, quickly!"

He had slid down the ladders, in spite of the watchman, and was

declaring that he had heard hammering over there, in the first passage

of the Guillaume seam.

"But we have already been twice in that direction," Négrel observed,

sceptically. "Anyhow, we'll go and see."

Maheude had risen, and had to be prevented from going down. She waited,

standing at the edge of the shaft, gazing down into the darkness of the

hole.

Négrel, down below, himself struck three blows, at long intervals. He

then applied his ear to the coal, cautioning the workers to be very

silent. Not a sound reached him, and he shook his head; evidently

the poor lad was dreaming. In a fury, Zacharie struck in his turn,

and listened anew with bright eyes, and limbs trembling with joy.

Then the other workmen tried the experiment, one after the other,

and all grew animated, hearing the distant reply quite clearly. The

engineer was astonished; he again applied his ear, and was at last

able to catch a sound of aerial softness, a rhythmical roll scarcely

to be distinguished, the well-known cadence beaten by the miners

when they are fighting against the coal in the midst of danger. The

coal transmits the sound with crystalline limpidity for a very great

distance. A captain who was there estimated that the thickness of the

block which separated them from their mates could not be less than

fifty metres. But it seemed as if they could already stretch out a hand

to them, and general gladness broke out. Négrel decided to begin at

once the work of approach.

When Zacharie, up above, saw Maheude again, they embraced each other.

"It won't do to get excited," Pierronne, who had come for a visit of

inquisitiveness, was cruel enough to say. "If Catherine isn't there, it

would be such a grief afterwards!"

That was true; Catherine might be somewhere else.

"Just leave me alone, will you? Damn it!" cried Zacharie in a rage.

"She's there; I know it!"

Maheude sat down again in silence, with motionless face, continuing to

wait.

As soon as the story was spread at Montsou, a new crowd arrived.

Nothing was to be seen; but they remained there all the same, and had

to be kept at a distance. Down below, the work went on day and night.

For fear of meeting an obstacle, the engineer had had three descending

galleries opened in the seam, converging to the point where the

enclosed miners were supposed to be. Only one pikeman could hew at the

coal on the narrow face of the tube; he was relieved every two hours,

and the coal piled in baskets was passed up, from hand to hand, by a

chain of men, increased as the hole was hollowed out. The work at first

proceeded very quickly; they did six metres a day.

Zacharie had secured a place among the workers chosen for the hewing.

It was a post of honour which was disputed over, and he became furious

when they wished to relieve him after his regulation two hours of

labour. He robbed his mates of their turn, and refused to let go the

pick. His gallery was soon in advance of the others. He fought against

the coal so fiercely that his breath could be heard coming from the

tube like the roar of a forge within his breast. When he came out,

black and muddy, dizzy with fatigue, he fell to the ground and had to

be wrapped up in a covering. Then, still tottering, he plunged back

again, and the struggle began anew--the low, deep blows, the stifled

groans, the victorious fury of massacre. The worst was that the coal

now became hard; he twice broke his tool, and was exasperated that

he could not get on so fast. He suffered also from the heat, which

increased with every metre of advance, and was unbearable at the end of

this narrow hole where the air could not circulate. A hand ventilator

worked well, but aeration was so inadequate that on three occasions it

was necessary to take out fainting hewers who were being asphyxiated.

Négrel lived below with his men. His meals were sent down to him, and

he sometimes slept for a couple of hours on a truss of straw, rolled

in a cloak. The one thing that kept them up was the supplication of

the wretches beyond, the call which was sounded ever more distinctly

to hasten on the rescue. It now rang very clearly with a musical

sonority, as though struck on the plates of a harmonica. It led them

on; they advanced to this crystalline sound as men advance to the sound

of cannon in battle. Every time that a pikeman was relieved, Négrel

went down and struck, then applied his ear; and every time, so far,

the reply had come, rapid and urgent. He had no doubt remaining; they

were advancing in the right direction, but with what fatal slowness!

They would never arrive soon enough. On the first two days they had

indeed hewn through thirteen metres; but on the third day they fell to

five, and then on the fourth to three. The coal was becoming closer

and harder, to such an extent that they now with difficulty struck

through two metres. On the ninth day, after superhuman efforts, they

had advanced thirty-two metres, and calculated that some twenty must

still be left before them. For the prisoners it was the beginning of

the twelfth day; twelve times over had they passed twenty-four hours

without bread, without fire, in that icy darkness! This awful idea

moistened the eyelids and stiffened the arm of the workers. It seemed

impossible that Christians could live longer. The distant blows had

become weaker since the previous day, and every moment they trembled

lest they should stop.

Maheude came regularly every morning to sit at the mouth of the

shaft. In her arms she brought Estelle, who could not remain alone

from morning to night. Hour by hour she followed the workers, sharing

their hopes and fears. There was feverish expectation among the groups

standing around, and even as far as Montsou, with endless discussion.

Every heart in the district was beating down there beneath the earth.

On the ninth day, at the breakfast hour, no reply came from Zacharie

when he was called for the relay. He was like a madman, working on

furiously with oaths. Négrel, who had come up for a moment, was not

there to make him obey, and only a captain and three miners were below.

No doubt Zacharie, infuriated with the feeble vacillating light,

which delayed his work, committed the imprudence of opening his lamp,

although severe orders had been given, for leakages of fire-damp had

taken place, and the gas remained in enormous masses in these narrow,

unventilated passages. Suddenly, a roar of thunder was heard, and a

spout of fire darted out of the tube as from the mouth of a cannon

charged with grapeshot. Everything flamed up and the air caught fire

like powder, from one end of the galleries to the other. This torrent

of flame carried away the captain and three workers, ascended the pit,

and leapt up to the daylight in an eruption which split the rocks and

the ruins around. The inquisitive fled, and Maheude arose, pressing the

frightened Estelle to her breast.

When Négrel and the men came back they were seized by a terrible

rage. They struck their heels on the earth as on a stepmother who was

killing her children at random in the imbecile whims of her cruelty.

They were devoting themselves, they were coming to the help of their

mates, and still they must lose some of their men! After three long

hours of effort and danger they reached the galleries once more, and

the melancholy ascent of the victims took place. Neither the captain

nor the workers were dead, but they were covered by awful wounds which

gave out an odour of grilled flesh; they had drunk of fire, the burns

had got into their throats, and they constantly moaned and prayed to be

finished off. One of the three miners was the man who had smashed the

pump at Gaston-Marie with a final blow of the shovel during the strike;

the two others still had scars on their hands, and grazed, torn fingers

from the energy with which they had thrown bricks at the soldiers. The

pale and shuddering crowd took off their hats when they were carried by.

Maheude stood waiting. Zacharie's body at last appeared. The clothes

were burnt, the body was nothing but black charcoal, calcined and

unrecognizable. The head had been smashed by the explosion and

no longer existed. And when these awful remains were placed on a

stretcher, Maheude followed them mechanically, her burning eyelids

without a tear. With Estelle drowsily lying in her arms, she went

along, a tragic figure, her hair lashed by the wind. At the settlement

Philoméne seemed stupid; her eyes were turned into fountains and she

was quickly relieved. But the mother had already returned with the same

step to Réquillart; she had accompanied her son, she was returning to

wait for her daughter.

Three more days passed by. The rescue work had been resumed amid

incredible difficulties. The galleries of approach had fortunately not

fallen after the fire-damp explosion; but the air was so heavy and

so vitiated that more ventilators had to be installed. Every twenty

minutes the pikemen relieved one another. They were advancing; scarcely

two metres separated them from their mates. But now they worked feeling

cold at their hearts, striking hard only out of vengeance; for the

noises had ceased, and the low, clear cadence of the call no longer

sounded. It was the twelfth day of their labours, the fifteenth since

the catastrophe; and since the morning there had been a death-like

silence.

The new accident increased the curiosity at Montsou, and the

inhabitants organized excursions with such spirit that the Grégoires

decided to follow the fashion. They arranged a party, and it was agreed

that they should go to the Voreux in their carriage, while Madame

Hennebeau took Lucie and Jeanne there in hers. Deneulin would show them

over his yards and then they would return by Réquillart, where Négrel

would tell them the exact state of things in the galleries, and if

there was still hope. Finally, they would dine together in the evening.

When the Grégoires and their daughter Cécile arrived at the ruined

mine, toward three o'clock, they found Madame Hennebeau already there,

in a sea-blue dress, protecting herself under her parasol from the pale

February sun. The warmth of spring was in the clear sky. M. Hennebeau

was there with Deneulin, and she was listening, with listless ear, to

the account which the latter gave her of the efforts which had been

made to dam up the canal. Jeanne, who always carried a sketch-book with

her, began to draw, carried away by the horror of the subject; while

Lucie, seated beside her on the remains of a wagon, was crying out with

pleasure, and finding it awfully jolly. The incomplete dam allowed

numerous leaks, and frothy streams fell in a cascade down the enormous

hole of the engulfed mine. The crater was being emptied, however, and

the water, drunk by the earth, was sinking, and revealing the fearful

ruin at the bottom. Beneath the tender azure of this beautiful day

there lay a sewer, the ruins of a town drowned and melted in mud.

"And people come out of their way to see that!" exclaimed M. Grégoire,

disillusioned.

Cécile, rosy with health and glad to breathe so pure an air, was

cheerfully joking, while Madame Hennebeau made a little grimace of

repugnance as she murmured:

"The fact is, this is not pretty at all."

The two engineers laughed. They tried to interest the visitors, taking

them round and explaining to them the working of the pumps and the

manipulation of the stamper which drove in the piles. But the ladies

became anxious. They shuddered when they knew that the pumps would have

to work for six or seven years before the shaft was reconstructed and

all the water exhausted from the mine. No, they would rather think of

something else; this destruction was only good to give bad dreams.

"Let us go," said Madame Hennebeau, turning towards her carriage.

Lucie and Jeanne protested. What! so soon! and the drawing which was

not finished. They wanted to remain; their father would bring them to

dinner in the evening.

M. Hennebeau alone took his place with his wife in the carriage, for he

wished to question Négrel.

"Very well! go on before," said M. Grégoire. "We will follow you;

we have a little visit of five minutes to make over there at the

settlement. Go on, go on! we shall be at Réquillart as soon as you."

He got up behind Madame Grégoire and Cécile, and while the other

carriage went along by the canal, theirs gently ascended the slope.

Their excursion was to be completed by a visit of charity. Zacharie's

death had filled them with pity for this tragical Maheu family, about

whom the whole country was talking. They had no pity for the father,

that brigand, that slayer of soldiers, who had to be struck down like

a wolf. But the mother touched them, that poor woman who had just lost

her son after having lost her husband, and whose daughter was perhaps a

corpse beneath the earth; to say nothing of an invalid grandfather, a

child who was lame as the result of a landslip, and a little girl who

died of starvation during the strike. So that, though this family had

in part deserved its misfortunes by the detestable spirit it had shown,

they had resolved to assert the breadth of their charity, their desire

for forgetfulness and conciliation, by themselves bringing on alms. Two

parcels, carefully wrapped up, had been placed beneath a seat of the

carriage.

An old woman pointed out to the coachman Maheude's house, No. 16 in

the second block. But when the Grégoires alighted with the parcels,

they knocked in vain; at last they struck their fists against the door,

still without reply; the house echoed mournfully, like a house emptied

by grief, frozen and dark, long since abandoned.

"There's no one there," said Cécile, disappointed. "What a nuisance!

What shall we do with all this?"

Suddenly the door of the next house opened, and the Levaque woman

appeared.

"Oh, sir! I beg pardon, ma'am. Excuse me, miss. It's the neighbour that

you want? She's not there; she's at Réquillart."

With a flow of words she told them the story, repeating to them that

people must help one another, and that she was keeping Lénore and

Henri in her house to allow the mother to go and wait over there. Her

eyes had fallen on the parcels, and she began to talk about her poor

daughter, who had become a widow, displaying her own wretchedness,

while her eyes shone with covetousness. Then, in a hesitating way, she

muttered:

"I've got the key. If the lady and gentleman would really like---- The

grandfather is there."

The Grégoires looked at her in stupefaction. What! The grandfather was

there! But no one had replied. He was sleeping, then? And when the

Levaque made up her mind to open the door, what they saw stopped them

on the threshold. Bonnemort was there alone, with large fixed eyes,

nailed to his chair in front of the cold fireplace. Around him the room

appeared larger without the clock or the polished deal furniture which

formerly animated it; there only remained against the green crudity of

the walls the portraits of the Emperor and Empress, whose rosy lips

were smiling with official benevolence. The old man did not stir nor

wink his eyelids beneath the sudden light from the door; he seemed

imbecile, as though he had not seen all these people come in. At his

feet lay his plate, garnished with ashes, such as is placed for cats

for ordure.

"Don't mind if he's not very polite," said the Levaque woman,

obligingly. "Seems he's broken something in his brain. It's a fortnight

since he left off speaking."

But Bonnemort was shaken by some agitation, a deep scraping which

seemed to arise from his belly, and he expectorated into the plate a

thick black expectoration. The ashes were soaked into a coaly mud,

all the coal of the mine which he drew from his chest. He had already

resumed his immobility. He stirred no more, except at intervals, to

spit.

Uneasy, and with stomachs turned, the Grégoires endeavoured to utter a

few friendly and encouraging words.

"Well, my good man," said the father, "you have a cold, then?"

The old man, with his eyes to the wall, did not turn his head. And a

heavy silence fell once more.

"They ought to make you a little gruel," added the mother.

He preserved his mute stiffness.

"I say, papa," murmured Cécile, "they certainly told us he was an

invalid; only we did not think of it afterwards--"

She interrupted herself, much embarrassed. After having placed on the

table a _pot-au-feu_ and two bottles of wine, she undid the second

parcel and drew from it a pair of enormous boots. It was the present

intended for the grandfather, and she held one boot in each hand, in

confusion, contemplating the poor man's swollen feet, which would never

walk again.

"Eh! they come a little late, don't they, my worthy fellow?" said M.

Grégoire again, to enliven the situation. "It doesn't matter, they're

always useful."

Bonnemort neither heard nor replied, with his terrible face as cold and

as hard as a stone.

Then Cécile furtively placed the boots against the wall. But in spite

of her precautions the nails clanked; and those enormous boots stood

oppressively in the room.

"He won't say thank you," said the Levaque woman, who had cast a look

of deep envy on the boots. "Might as well give a pair of spectacles to

a duck, asking your pardon."

She went on; she was trying to draw the Grégoires into her own house,

where she hoped to gain their pity. At last she thought of a pretext;

she praised Henri and Lénore, who were so good, so gentle, and so

intelligent, answering like angels the questions that they were asked.

They would tell the lady and gentleman all that they wished to know.

"Will you come for a moment, my child?" asked the father, glad to get

away.

"Yes, I'll follow you," she replied.

Cécile remained alone with Bonnemort. What kept her there trembling

and fascinated, was the thought that she seemed to recognize this old

man: where then had she met this square livid face, tattooed with coal?

Suddenly she remembered; she saw again a mob of shouting people who

surrounded her, and she felt cold hands pressing her neck. It was he;

she saw the man again; she looked at his hands placed on his knees,

the hands of an invalid workman whose whole strength is in his wrists,

still firm in spite of age. Gradually Bonnemort seemed to awake, he

perceived her and examined her in his turn. A flame mounted to his

cheeks, a nervous spasm drew his mouth, from which flowed a thin streak

of black saliva. Fascinated, they remained opposite each other--she

flourishing, plump, and fresh from the long idleness and sated comfort

of her race; he swollen with water, with the pitiful ugliness of a

foundered beast, destroyed from father to son by a century of work and

hunger.

At the end of ten minutes, when the Grégoires, surprised at not seeing

Cécile, came back into the Maheus' house, they uttered a terrible cry.

Their daughter was lying on the ground, with livid face, strangled. At

her neck fingers had left the red imprint of a giant's hand. Bonnemort,

tottering on his dead legs, had fallen beside her without power to

rise. His hands were still hooked, and he looked round with his

imbecile air and large open eyes. In his fall he had broken his plate,

the ashes were spread round, the mud of the black expectoration had

stained the floor; while the great pair of boots, safe and sound, stood

side by side against the wall.

It was never possible to establish the exact facts. Why had Cécile come

near? How could Bonnemort, nailed to his chair, have been able to seize

her throat? Evidently, when he held her, he must have become furious,

constantly pressing, overthrown with her, and stifling her cries to the

last groan. Not a sound, not a moan had traversed the thin partition to

the neighbouring house. It seemed to be an outbreak of sudden madness,

a longing to murder before this white young neck. Such savagery was

stupefying in an old invalid, who had lived like a worthy man, an

obedient brute, opposed to new ideas. What rancour, unknown to himself,

by some slow process of poisoning, had risen from his bowels to his

brain? The horror of it led to the conclusion that he was unconscious,

that it was the crime of an idiot.

The Grégoires, meanwhile, on their knees, were sobbing, choked with

grief. Their idolized daughter, that daughter desired so long, on whom

they had lavished all their goods, whom they used to watch sleeping,

on tiptoe, whom they never thought sufficiently well nourished, never

sufficiently plump! It was the downfall of their very life; what was

the good of living, now that they would have to live without her?

The Levaque woman in distraction cried:

"Ah, the old beggar! what's he done there? Who would have expected such

a thing? And Maheude, who won't come back till evening! Shall I go and

fetch her?"

The father and mother were crushed, and did not reply.

"Eh? It will be better. I'll go."

But, before going, the Levaque woman looked at the boots. The whole

settlement was excited, and a crowd was already hustling around.

Perhaps they would get stolen. And then the Maheus had no man, now,

to put them on. She quietly carried them away. They would just fit

Bouteloup's feet.

At Réquillart the Hennebeaus, with Négrel, waited a long time for the

Grégoires. Négrel, who had come up from the pit, gave details. They

hoped to communicate that very evening with the prisoners, but they

would certainly find nothing but corpses, for the death-like silence

continued. Behind the engineer, Maheude, seated on the beam, was

listening with white face, when the Levaque woman came up and told her

the old man's strange deed. And she only made a sweeping gesture of

impatience and irritation. She followed her, however.

Madame Hennebeau was much affected. What an abomination! That poor

Cécile, so merry that very day, so full of life an hour before! M.

Hennebeau had to lead his wife for a moment into old Mouque's hovel.

With his awkward hands he unfastened her dress, troubled by the odour

of musk which her open bodice exhaled. And as with streaming tears she

clasped Négrel, terrified at this death which cut short the marriage,

the husband watched them lamenting together, and was delivered from one

anxiety. This misfortune would arrange everything; he preferred to keep

his nephew for fear of his coachman.

CHAPTER V

At the bottom of the shaft the abandoned wretches were yelling with

terror. The water now came up to their hips. The noise of the torrent

dazed them, the final falling in of the tubbing sounded like the last

crack of doom; and their bewilderment was completed by the neighing of

the horses shut up in the stable, the terrible, unforgettable death-cry

of an animal that is being slaughtered.

Mouque had let go Bataille. The old horse was there, trembling, with

its dilated eye fixed on this water which was constantly rising. The

pit-eye was rapidly filling; the greenish flood slowly enlarged under

the red gleam of the three lamps which were still burning under the

roof. And suddenly, when he felt this ice soaking his coat, he set out

in a furious gallop, and was engulfed and lost at the end of one of the

haulage galleries.

Then there was a general rush, the men following the beast.

"Nothing more to be done in this damned hole!" shouted Mouque. "We must

try at Réquillart."

The idea that they might get out by the old neighbouring pit if

they arrived before the passage was cut off, now carried them away.

The twenty hustled one another as they went in single file, holding

their lamps in the air so that the water should not extinguish them.

Fortunately, the gallery rose with an imperceptible slope, and they

proceeded for two hundred metres, struggling against the flood, which

was not now gaining on them. Sleeping beliefs reawakened in these

distracted souls; they invoked the earth, for it was the earth that

was avenging herself, discharging the blood from the vein because they

had cut one of her arteries. An old man stammered forgotten prayers,

bending his thumbs backwards to appease the evil spirits of the mine.

But at the first turning disagreement broke out; the groom proposed

turning to the left, others declared that they could make a short cut

by going to the right. A minute was lost.

"Well, die there! what the devil does it matter to me?" Chaval brutally

exclaimed. "I go this way."

He turned to the right, and two mates followed him. The others

continued to rush behind Father Mouque, who had grown up at the bottom

of Réquillart. He himself hesitated, however, not knowing where to

turn. They lost their heads; even the old men could no longer recognize

the passages, which lay like a tangled skein before them. At every

bifurcation they were pulled up short by uncertainty, and yet they had

to decide.

Étienne was running last, delayed by Catherine, who was paralysed by

fatigue and fear. He would have gone to the right with Chaval, for he

thought that the better road; but he had not, preferring to part from

Chaval. The rush continued, however; some of the mates had gone from

their side, and only seven were left behind old Mouque.

"Hang on to my neck and I will carry you," said Étienne to the young

girl, seeing her grow weak.

"No, let me be," she murmured. "I can't do more; I would rather die at

once."

They delayed and were left fifty metres behind; he was lifting her,

in spite of her resistance, when the gallery was suddenly stopped up;

an enormous block fell in and separated them from the others. The

inundation was already soaking the soil, which was shifting on every

side. They had to retrace their steps; then they no longer knew in what

direction they were going. There was an end of all hope of escaping by

Réquillart. Their only remaining hope was to gain the upper workings,

from which they might perhaps be delivered if the water sank.

Étienne at last recognized the Guillaume seam.

"Good!" he exclaimed. "Now I know where we are. By God! we were in the

right road; but we may go to the devil now! Here, let us go straight

on; we will climb up the passage."

The flood was beating against their breasts, and they walked very

slowly. As long as they had light they did not despair, and they blew

out one of the lamps to economize the oil, meaning to empty it into the

other lamp. They had reached the chimney passage, when a noise behind

made them turn. Was it some mates, then, who had also found the road

barred and were returning? A roaring sound came from afar; they could

not understand this tempest which approached them, spattering foam. And

they cried out when they saw a gigantic whitish mass coming out of the

shadow and trying to rejoin them between the narrow timbering in which

it was being crushed.

It was Bataille. On leaving the pit-eye he had wildly galloped along

the dark galleries. He seemed to know his road in this subterranean

town which he had inhabited for eleven years, and his eyes saw clearly

in the depths of the eternal night in which he had lived. He galloped

on and on, bending his head, drawing up his feet, passing through these

narrow tubes in the earth, filled by his great body. Road succeeded

to road, and the forked turnings were passed without any hesitation.

Where was he going? Over there, perhaps, towards that vision of his

youth, to the mill where he had been born on the bank of the Scarpe, to

the confused recollection of the sun burning in the air like a great

lamp. He desired to live, his beast's memory awoke; the longing to

breathe once more the air of the plains drove him straight onwards to

the discovery of that hole, the exit beneath the warm sun into light.

Rebellion carried away his ancient resignation; this pit was murdering

him after having blinded him. The water which pursued him was lashing

him on the flanks and biting him on the crupper. But as he went deeper

in, the galleries became narrower, the roofs lower, and the walls

protruded. He galloped on in spite of everything, grazing himself,

leaving shreds of his limbs on the timber. From every side the mine

seemed to be pressing on to him to take him and to stifle him.

Then Étienne and Catherine, as he came near them, perceived that he

was strangling between the rocks. He had stumbled and broken his two

front legs. With a last effort, he dragged himself a few metres, but

his flanks could not pass; he remained hemmed in and garrotted by the

earth. With his bleeding head stretched out, he still sought for some

crack with his great troubled eyes. The water was rapidly covering

him; he began to neigh with that terrible prolonged death-rattle with

which the other horses had already died in the stable. It was a sight

of fearful agony, this old beast shattered and motionless, struggling

at this depth, far from the daylight. The flood was drowning his mane,

and his cry of distress never ceased; he uttered it more hoarsely, with

his large open mouth stretched out. There was a last rumble, the hollow

sound of a cask which is being filled; then deep silence fell.

"Oh, my God! take me away!" Catherine sobbed. "Ah, my God! I'm afraid;

I don't want to die. Take me away! take me away!"

She had seen death. The fallen shaft, the inundated mine, nothing had

seized her with such terror as this clamour of Bataille in agony. And

she constantly heard it; her ears were ringing with it; all her flesh

was shuddering with it.

"Take me away! take me away!"

Étienne had seized her and lifted her; it was, indeed, time. They

ascended the chimney passage, soaked to the shoulders. He was obliged

to help her, for she had no strength to cling to the timber. Three

times over he thought that she was slipping from him and falling back

into that deep sea of which the tide was roaring beneath them. However,

they were able to breathe for a few minutes when they reached the first

gallery, which was still free. The water reappeared, and they had to

hoist themselves up again. And for hours this ascent continued, the

flood chasing them from passage to passage, and constantly forcing them

to ascend. At the sixth level a respite rendered them feverish with

hope, and it seemed that the waters were becoming stationary. But a

more rapid rise took place, and they had to climb to the seventh and

then to the eighth level. Only one remained, and when they had reached

it they anxiously watched each centimetre by which the water gained

on them. If it did not stop they would then die like the old horse,

crushed against the roof, and their chests filled by the flood.

Landslips echoed every moment. The whole mine was shaken, and its

distended bowels burst with the enormous flood which gorged them. At

the end of the galleries the air, driven back, pressed together and

crushed, exploded terribly amid split rocks and overthrown soil. It was

a terrifying uproar of interior cataclysms, a remnant of the ancient

battle when deluges overthrew the earth, burying the mountains beneath

the plains.

And Catherine, shaken and dazed by this continuous downfall, joined her

hands, stammering the same words without cessation:

"I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"

To reassure her, Étienne declared that the water was not now moving.

Their flight had lasted for fully six hours, and they would soon be

rescued. He said six hours without knowing, for they had lost all count

of time. In reality, a whole day had already passed in their climb up

through the Guillaume seam.

Drenched and shivering, they settled themselves down. She undressed

herself without shame and wrung out her clothes, then she put on

again the jacket and breeches, and let them finish drying on her. As

her feet were bare, he made her take his own sabots. They could wait

patiently now; they had lowered the wick of the lamp, leaving only the

feeble gleam of a night-light. But their stomachs were torn by cramp,

and they both realized that they were dying of hunger. Up till now

they had not felt that they were living. The catastrophe had occurred

before breakfast, and now they found their bread-and-butter swollen

by the water and changed into sop. She had to become angry before he

would accept his share. As soon as she had eaten she fell asleep from

weariness, on the cold earth. He was devoured by insomnia, and watched

over her with fixed eyes and forehead between his hands.

How many hours passed by thus? He would have been unable to say. All

that he knew was that before him, through the hole they had ascended,

he had seen the flood reappear, black and moving, the beast whose back

was ceaselessly swelling out to reach them. At first it was only a thin

line, a supple serpent stretching itself out; then it enlarged into a

crawling, crouching flank; and soon it reached them, and the sleeping

girl's feet were touched by it. In his anxiety he yet hesitated to wake

her. Was it not cruel to snatch her from this repose of unconscious

ignorance, which was, perhaps, lulling her with a dream of the open

air and of life beneath the sun? Besides, where could they fly? And he

thought and remembered that the upbrow established at this part of the

seam communicated end to end with that which served the upper level.

That would be a way out. He let her sleep as long as possible, watching

the flood gain on them, waiting for it to chase them away. At last he

lifted her gently, and a great shudder passed over her.

"Ah, my God! it's true! it's beginning again, my God!"

She remembered, she cried out, again finding death so near.

"No! calm yourself," he whispered. "We can pass, upon my word!"

To reach the upbrow they had to walk doubled up, again wetted to the

shoulders. And the climbing began anew, now more dangerous, through

this hole entirely of timber, a hundred metres long. At first they

wished to pull the cable so as to fix one of the carts at the bottom,

for if the other should come down during their ascent, they would

be crushed. But nothing moved, some obstacle interfered with the

mechanism. They ventured in, not daring to make use of the cable which

was in their way, and tearing their nails against the smooth framework.

He came behind, supporting her by his head when she slipped with torn

hands. Suddenly they came across the splinters of a beam which barred

the way. A portion of the soil had fallen down and prevented them from

going any higher. Fortunately a door opened here and they passed into a

passage. They were stupefied to see the flicker of a lamp in front of

them. A man cried wildly to them:

"More clever people as big fools as I am!"

They recognized Chaval, who had found himself blocked by the landslip

which filled the upbrow; his two mates who had set out with him had

been left on the way with fractured skulls. He was wounded in the

elbow, but had had the courage to go back on his knees, take their

lamps, and search them to steal their bread-and-butter. As he escaped,

a final downfall behind his back had closed the gallery.

He immediately swore that he would not share his victuals with these

people who came up out of the earth. He would sooner knock their brains

out. Then he, too, recognized them; his anger fell, and he began to

laugh with a laugh of evil joy.

"Ah! it's you, Catherine! you've broken your nose, and you want to join

your man again. Well, well! we'll play out the game together."

He pretended not to see Étienne. The latter, overwhelmed by this

encounter, made a gesture as though to protect the putter, who was

pressing herself against him. He must, however, accept the situation.

Speaking as though they had left each other good friends an hour

before, he simply asked:

"Have you looked down below? We can't pass through the cuttings, then?"

Chaval still grinned.

"Ah, bosh! the cuttings! They've fallen in too; we are between two

walls, a real mousetrap. But you can go back by the brow if you are a

good diver."

The water, in fact, was rising; they could hear it rippling. Their

retreat was already cut off. And he was right; it was a mousetrap,

a gallery-end obstructed before and behind by considerable falls of

earth. There was not one issue; all three were walled up.

"Then you'll stay?" Chaval added, jeeringly. "Well, it's the best you

can do, and if you'll just leave me alone, I shan't even speak to you.

There's still room here for two men. We shall soon see which will die

first, provided they don't come to us, which seems a tough job."

The young man said:

"If we were to hammer, they would hear us, perhaps."

"I'm tired of hammering. Here, try yourself with this stone."

Étienne picked up the fragment of sandstone which the other had already

broken off, and against the seam at the end he struck the miner's call,

the prolonged roll by which workmen in peril signal their presence.

Then he placed his ear to listen. Twenty times over he persisted; no

sound replied.

During this time Chaval affected to be coolly attending to his little

household. First he arranged the three lamps against the wall; only one

was burning, the others could be used later on. Afterwards, he placed

on a piece of timber the two slices of bread-and-butter which were

still left. That was the sideboard; he could last quite two days with

that, if he were careful. He turned round saying:

"You know, Catherine, there will be half for you when you are famished."

The young girl was silent. It completed her unhappiness to find herself

again between these two men.

And their awful life began. Neither Chaval nor Étienne opened their

mouths, seated on the earth a few paces from each other. At a hint

from the former the latter extinguished his lamp, a piece of useless

luxury; then they sank back into silence. Catherine was lying down near

Étienne, restless under the glances of her former lover. The hours

passed by; they heard the low murmur of the water for ever rising;

while from time to time deep shocks and distant echoes announced the

final settling down of the mine. When the lamp was empty and they had

to open another to light it, they were, for a moment, disturbed by

the fear of fire-damp; but they would rather have been blown up at

once than live on in darkness. Nothing exploded, however; there was no

fire-damp. They stretched themselves out again, and the hours continued

to pass by.

A noise aroused Étienne and Catherine, and they raised their

heads. Chaval had decided to eat; he had cut off half a slice of

bread-and-butter, and was chewing it slowly, to avoid the temptation of

swallowing it all. They gazed at him, tortured by hunger.

"Well, do you refuse?" he said to the putter, in his provoking way.

"You're wrong."

She had lowered her eyes, fearing to yield; her stomach was torn by

such cramps that tears were swelling beneath her eyelids. But she

understood what he was asking; in the morning he had breathed over her

neck; he was seized again by one of his old furies of desire on seeing

her near the other man. The glances with which he called her had a

flame in them which she knew well, the flame of his crises of jealousy

when he would fall on her with his fists, accusing her of committing

abominations with her mother's lodger. And she was not willing; she

trembled lest, by returning to him, she should throw these two men

on to each other in this narrow cave, where they were all in agony

together. Good God! why could they not end together in comradeship!

Étienne would have died of inanition rather than beg a mouthful of

bread from Chaval. The silence became heavy; an eternity seemed to be

prolonging itself with the slowness of monotonous minutes which passed

by, one by one, without hope. They had now been shut up together for a

day. The second lamp was growing pale, and they lighted the third.

Chaval started on his second slice of bread-and-butter, and growled:

"Come then, stupid!"

Catherine shivered. Étienne had turned away in order to leave her free.

Then, as she did not stir, he said to her in a low voice:

"Go, my child."

The tears which she was stifling then rushed forth. She wept for a

long time, without even strength to rise, no longer knowing if she was

hungry, suffering with pain which she felt all over her body. He was

standing up, going backward and forwards, vainly beating the miners

call, enraged at this remainder of life which he was obliged to live

here tied to a rival whom he detested. Not even enough space to die

away from each other! As soon as he had gone ten paces he must come

back and knock up against this man. And she, this sorrowful girl whom

they were disputing over even in the earth! She would belong to the

one who lived longest; that man would steal her from him should he

go first. There was no end to it; the hours followed the hours; the

revolting promiscuity became worse, with the poison of their breaths

and the ordure of their necessities satisfied in common. Twice he

rushed against the rocks as though to open them with his fists.

Another day was done, and Chaval had seated himself near Catherine,

sharing with her his last half-slice. She was chewing the mouthfuls

painfully; he made her pay for each with a caress, in his jealous

obstinacy not willing to die until he had had her again in the other

man's presence. She abandoned herself in exhaustion. But when he tried

to take her she complained.

"Oh, leave me! you're breaking my bones."

Étienne, with a shudder, had placed his forehead against the timber so

as not to see. He came back with a wild leap.

"Leave her, by God!"

"Does it concern you?" said Chaval. "She's my woman; I suppose she

belongs to me!"

And he took her again and pressed her, out of bravado, crushing his red

moustache against her mouth, and continuing:

"Will you leave us alone, eh? Will you be good enough to look over

there if we are at it?"

But Étienne, with white lips, shouted:

"If you don't let her go, I'll do for you!"

The other quickly stood up, for he had understood by the hiss of the

voice that his mate was in earnest. Death seemed to them too slow; it

was necessary that one of them should immediately yield his place. It

was the old battle beginning over again, down in the earth where they

would soon sleep side by side; and they had so little room that they

could not swing their fists without grazing them.

"Look out!" growled Chaval. "This time I'll have you."

From that moment Étienne became mad. His eyes seemed drowned in red

vapour, his chest was congested by the flow of blood. The need to kill

seized him irresistibly, a physical need, like the irritation of mucus

which causes a violent spasm of coughing. It rose and broke out beyond

his will, beneath the pressure of the hereditary disease. He had seized

a sheet of slate in the wall and he shook it and tore it out, a very

large, heavy piece. Then with both hands and with tenfold strength he

brought it down on Chaval's skull.

The latter had not time to jump backwards. He fell, his face crushed,

his skull broken. The brains had bespattered the roof of the gallery,

and a purple jet flowed from the wound, like the continuous jet of a

spring. Immediately there was a pool, which reflected the smoky star

of the lamp. Darkness was invading the walled-up cave, and this body,

lying on the earth, looked like the black boss of a mass of rough coal.

Leaning over, with wide eyes, Étienne looked at him. It was done, then;

he had killed. All his struggles came back to his memory confusedly,

that useless fight against the poison which slept in his muscles,

the slowly accumulated alcohol of his race. He was, however, only

intoxicated by hunger; the remote intoxication of his parents had been

enough. His hair stood up before the horror of this murder; and yet, in

spite of the revolt which came from his education, a certain gladness

made his heart beat, the animal joy of an appetite at length satisfied.

He felt pride, too, the pride of the stronger man. The little soldier

appeared before him, with his throat opened by a knife, killed by a

child. Now he, too, had killed.

But Catherine, standing erect, uttered a loud cry:

"My God! he is dead!"

"Are you sorry?" asked Étienne, fiercely.

She was choking, she stammered. Then, tottering, she threw herself into

his arms.

"Ah, kill me too! Ah, let us both die!"

She clasped him, hanging to his shoulders, and he clasped her; and they

hoped that they would die. But death was in no hurry, and they unlocked

their arms. Then, while she hid her eyes, he dragged away the wretch,

and threw him down the upbrow, to remove him from the narrow space in

which they still had to live. Life would no longer have been possible

with that corpse beneath their feet. And they were terrified when they

heard it plunge into the midst of the foam which leapt up. The water

had already filled that hole, then? They saw it; it was entering the

gallery.

Then there was a new struggle. They had lighted the last lamp; it

was becoming exhausted in illuminating this flood, with its regular,

obstinate rise which never ceased. At first the water came up to their

ankles; then it wetted their knees. The passage sloped up, and they

took refuge at the end. This gave them a respite for some hours. But

the flood caught them up, and bathed them to the waist. Standing up,

brought to bay, with their spines close against the rock, they watched

it ever and ever increasing. When it reached their mouths, all would

be over. The lamp, which they had fastened up, threw a yellow light

on the rapid surge of the little waves. It was becoming pale; they

could distinguish no more than a constantly diminishing semicircle, as

though eaten away by the darkness which seemed to grow with the flood;

and suddenly the darkness enveloped them. The lamp had gone out, after

having spat forth its last drop of oil. There was now complete and

absolute night, that night of the earth which they would have to sleep

through without ever again opening their eyes to the brightness of the

sun.

"By God!" Étienne swore, in a low voice.

Catherine, as though she had felt the darkness seize her, sheltered

herself against him. She repeated, in a whisper, the miner's saying:

"Death is blowing out the lamp."

Yet in the face of this threat their instincts struggled, the fever

for life animated them. He violently set himself to hollow out the

slate with the hook of the lamp, while she helped him with her nails.

They formed a sort of elevated bench, and when they had both hoisted

themselves up to it, they found themselves seated with hanging legs and

bent backs, for the vault forced them to lower their heads. They now

only felt the icy water at their heels; but before long the cold was at

their ankles, their calves, their knees, with its invincible, truceless

movement. The bench, not properly smoothed, was soaked in moisture, and

so slippery that they had to hold themselves on vigorously to avoid

slipping off. It was the end; what could they expect, reduced to this

niche where they dared not move, exhausted, starving, having neither

bread nor light? and they suffered especially from the darkness,

which would not allow them to see the coming of death. There was deep

silence; the mine, being gorged with water, no longer stirred. They had

nothing beneath them now but the sensation of that sea, swelling out

its silent tide from the depths of the galleries.

The hours succeeded one another, all equally black; but they were not

able to measure their exact duration, becoming more and more vague

in their calculation of time. Their tortures, which might have been

expected to lengthen the minutes, rapidly bore them away. They thought

that they had only been shut up for two days and a night, when in

reality the third day had already come to an end. All hope of help had

gone; no one knew they were there, no one could come down to them. And

hunger would finish them off if the inundation spared them. For one

last time it occurred to them to beat the call, but the stone was lying

beneath the water. Besides, who would hear them?

Catherine was leaning her aching head against the seam, when she sat up

with a start.

"Listen!" she said.

At first Étienne thought she was speaking of the low noise of the

ever-rising water. He lied in order to quiet her.

"It's me you hear; I'm moving my legs."

"No, no; not that! Over there, listen!"

And she placed her ear to the coal. He understood, and did likewise.

They waited for some seconds, with stifled breath. Then, very far away

and very weak, they heard three blows at long intervals. But they still

doubted; their ears were ringing; perhaps it was the cracking of the

soil. And they knew not what to strike with in answer.

Étienne had an idea.

"You have the sabots. Take them off and strike with the heels."

She struck, beating the miner's call; and they listened and again

distinguished the three blows far off. Twenty times over they did it,

and twenty times the blows replied. They wept and embraced each other,

at the risk of losing their balance. At last the mates were there, they

were coming. An overflowing joy and love carried away the torments

of expectation and the rage of their vain appeals, as though their

rescuers had only to split the rock with a finger to deliver them.

"Eh!" she cried merrily; "wasn't it lucky that I leant my head?"

"Oh, you've got an ear!" he said in his turn. "Now, _I_ heard

nothing."

From that moment they relieved each other, one of them always

listening, ready to answer at the least signal. They soon caught the

sounds of the pick; the work of approaching them was beginning, a

gallery was being opened. Not a sound escaped them. But their joy sank.

In vain they laughed to deceive each other; despair was gradually

seizing them. At first they entered into long explanations; evidently

they were being approached from Réquillart. The gallery descended in

the bed; perhaps several were being opened, for there were always

three men hewing. Then they talked less, and were at last silent when

they came to calculate the enormous mass which separated them from

their mates. They continued their reflections in silence, counting the

days and days that a workman would take to penetrate such a block.

They would never be reached soon enough; they would have time to die

twenty times over. And no longer venturing to exchange a word in this

redoubled anguish, they gloomily replied to the appeals by a roll of

the sabots, without hope, only retaining the mechanical need to tell

the others that they were still alive.

Thus passed a day, two days. They had been at the bottom six days. The

water had stopped at their knees, neither rising nor falling, and their

legs seemed to be melting away in this icy bath. They could certainly

keep them out for an hour or so, but their position then became so

uncomfortable that they were twisted by horrible cramps, and were

obliged to let their feet fall in again. Every ten minutes they hoisted

themselves back by a jerk on the slippery rock. The fractures of the

coal struck into their spines, and they felt at the back of their

necks a fixed intense pain, through having to keep constantly bent in

order to avoid striking their heads. And their suffocation increased;

the air, driven back by the water, was compressed into a sort of bell

in which they were shut up. Their voices were muffled, and seemed to

come from afar. Their ears began to buzz, they heard the peals of a

furious tocsin, the tramp of a flock beneath a storm of hail, going on

unceasingly.

At first Catherine suffered horribly from hunger. She pressed her

poor shrivelled hands against her breasts, her breathing was deep and

hollow, a continuous tearing moan, as though tongs were tearing her

stomach.

Étienne, choked by the same torture, was feeling feverishly round him

in the darkness, when his fingers came upon a half-rotten piece of

timber, which his nails could crumble. He gave a handful of it to the

putter, who swallowed it greedily. For two days they lived on this

worm-eaten wood, devouring it all, in despair when it was finished,

grazing their hands in the effort to crush the other planks which were

still solid with resisting fibres. Their torture increased, and they

were enraged that they could not chew the cloth of their clothes. A

leather belt, which he wore round the waist, relieved them a little.

He bit small pieces from it with his teeth, and she chewed them, and

endeavoured to swallow them. This occupied their jaws, and gave them

the illusion of eating. Then, when the belt was finished, they went

back to their clothes, sucking them for hours.

But soon these violent crises subsided; hunger became only a low deep

ache with the slow progressive languor of their strength. No doubt they

would have succumbed if they had not had as much water as they desired.

They merely bent down and drank from the hollow of the hand, and that

very frequently, parched by a thirst which all this water could not

quench.

On the seventh day Catherine was bending down to drink, when her hand

struck some floating body before her.

"I say, look! What's this?"

Étienne felt in the darkness.

"I can't make out; it seems like the cover of a ventilation door."

She drank, but as she was drawing up a second mouthful the body came

back, striking her hand. And she uttered a terrible cry.

"My God! it's he!"

"Whom do you mean?"

"Him! You know well enough. I felt his moustache."

It was Chaval's corpse, risen from the upbrow and pushed on to them by

the flow. Étienne stretched out his arm; he, too, felt the moustache

and the crushed nose, and shuddered with disgust and fear. Seized by

horrible nausea, Catherine had spat out the water which was still in

her mouth. It seemed to her that she had been drinking blood, and that

all the deep water before her was now that man's blood.

"Wait!" stammered Étienne. "I'll push him off!"

He kicked the corpse, which moved off. But soon they felt it again

striking against their legs.

"By God! Get off!"

And the third time Étienne had to leave it. Some current always brought

it back. Chaval would not go; he desired to be with them, against them.

It was an awful companion, at last poisoning the air. All that day they

never drank, struggling, preferring to die. It was not until the next

day that their suffering decided them: they pushed away the body at

each mouthful and drank in spite of it. It had not been worth while to

knock his brains out, for he came back between him and her, obstinate

in his jealousy. To the very end he would be there, even though he was

dead, preventing them from coming together.

A day passed, and again another day. At every shiver of the water

Étienne perceived a slight blow from the man he had killed, the simple

elbowing of a neighbour who is reminding you of his presence. And

every time it came he shuddered. He continually saw it there, swollen,

greenish, with the red moustache and the crushed face. Then he no

longer remembered; he had not killed him; the other man was swimming

and trying to bite him.

Catherine was now shaken by long endless fits of crying, after which

she was completely prostrated. She fell at last into a condition of

irresistible drowsiness. He would arouse her, but she stammered a few

words and at once fell asleep again without even raising her eyelids;

and fearing lest she should be drowned, he put his arm round her waist.

It was he now who replied to the mates. The blows of the pick were now

approaching, he could hear them behind his back. But his strength, too,

was diminishing; he had lost all courage to strike. They were known to

be there; why weary oneself more? It no longer interested him whether

they came or not. In the stupefaction of waiting he would forget for

hours at a time what he was waiting for.

One relief comforted them a little: the water sank, and Chaval's

body moved off. For nine days the work of their deliverance had been

going on, and they were for the first time taking a few steps in the

gallery when a fearful commotion threw them to the ground. They felt

for each other and remained in each other's arms like mad people, not

understanding, thinking the catastrophe was beginning over again.

Nothing more stirred, the sound of the picks had ceased.

In the corner where they were seated holding each other, side by side,

a low laugh came from Catherine.

"It must be good outside. Come, let's go out of here."

Étienne at first struggled against this madness. But the contagion was

shaking his stronger head, and he lost the exact sensation of reality.

All their senses seemed to go astray, especially Catherine's. She

was shaken by fever, tormented now by the need to talk and move. The

ringing in her ears had become the murmur of flowing water, the song

of birds; she smelled the strong odour of crushed grass, and could see

clearly great yellow patches floating before her eyes, so large that

she thought she was out of doors, near the canal, in the meadows on a

fine summer day.

"Eh? how warm it is! Take me, then; let us keep together. Oh, always,

always!"

He pressed her, and she rubbed herself against him for a long time,

continuing to chatter like a happy girl:

"How silly we have been to wait so long! I would have liked you at

once, and you did not understand; you sulked. Then, do you remember,

at our house at night, when we could not sleep, with our faces out

listening to each other's breathing, with such a longing to come

together?"

He was won by her gaiety, and joked over the recollection of their

silent tenderness.

"You struck me once. Yes, yes, blows on both cheeks!"

"It was because I loved you," she murmured. "You see, I prevented

myself from thinking of you. I said to myself that it was quite done

with, and all the time I knew that one day or another we should get

together. It only wanted an opportunity--some lucky chance. Wasn't it

so?"

A shudder froze him. He tried to shake off this dream; then he repeated

slowly:

"Nothing is ever done with; a little happiness is enough to make

everything begin again."

"Then you'll keep me, and it will be all right this time?"

And she slipped down fainting. She was so weak that her low voice died

out. In terror he kept her against his heart.

"Are you in pain?"

She sat up surprised.

"No, not at all. Why?"

But this question aroused her from her dream. She gazed at the darkness

with distraction, wringing her hands in another fit of sobbing.

"My God, my God, how black it is!"

It was no longer the meadows, the odour of the grass, the song of

larks, the great yellow sun; it was the fallen, inundated mine, the

stinking gloom, the melancholy dripping of this cellar where they had

been groaning for so many days. Her perverted senses now increased the

horror of it; her childish superstitions came back to her; she saw the

Black Man, the old dead miner who returns to the pit to twist naughty

girls' necks.

"Listen! did you hear?"

"No, nothing; I heard nothing."

"Yes, the Man--you know? Look! he is there. The earth has let all the

blood out of the vein to revenge itself for being cut into; and he is

there--you can see him--look! blacker than night. Oh, I'm so afraid,

I'm so afraid!"

She became silent, shivering. Then in a very low voice she whispered:

"No, it's always the other one."

"What other one?"

"Him who is with us; who is not alive."

The image of Chaval haunted her, she talked of him confusedly, she

described the dog's life she led with him, the only day when he had

been kind to her at Jean-Bart, the other days of follies and blows,

when he would kill her with caresses after having covered her with

kicks.

"I tell you that he's coming, that he will still keep us from being

together! His jealousy is coming on him again. Oh, push him off! Oh,

keep me close!"

With a sudden impulse she hung on to him, seeking his mouth and

pressing her own passionately to it. The darkness lighted up, she saw

the sun again, and she laughed a quiet laugh of love. He shuddered to

feel her thus against his flesh, half naked beneath the tattered jacket

and trousers, and he seized her with a reawakening of his virility. It

was at length their wedding night, at the bottom of this tomb, on this

bed of mud, the longing not to die before they had had their happiness,

the obstinate longing to live and make life one last time. They loved

each other in despair of everything, in death.

After that there was nothing more. Étienne was seated on the ground,

always in the same corner, and Catherine was lying motionless on his

knees. Hours and hours passed by. For a long time he thought she was

sleeping; then he touched her; she was very cold, she was dead. He did

not move, however, for fear of arousing her. The idea that he was the

first who had possessed her as a woman, and that she might be pregnant,

filled him with tenderness. Other ideas, the desire to go away with

her, joy at what they would both do later on, came to him at moments,

but so vaguely that it seemed only as though his forehead had been

touched by a breath of sleep. He grew weaker, he only had strength to

make a little gesture, a slow movement of the hand, to assure himself

that she was certainly there, like a sleeping child in her frozen

stiffness. Everything was being annihilated; the night itself had

disappeared, and he was nowhere, out of space, out of time. Something

was certainly striking beside his head, violent blows were approaching

him; but he had been too lazy to reply, benumbed by immense fatigue;

and now he knew nothing, he only dreamed that she was walking before

him, and that he heard the slight clank of her sabots. Two days passed;

she had not stirred; he touched her with his mechanical gesture,

reassured to find her so quiet.

Étienne felt a shock. Voices were sounding, rocks were rolling to his

feet. When he perceived a lamp he wept. His blinking eyes followed the

light, he was never tired of looking at it, enraptured by this reddish

point which scarcely stained the darkness. But some mates carried him

away, and he allowed them to introduce some spoonfuls of soup between

his clenched teeth. It was only in the Réquillart gallery that he

recognized someone standing before him, the engineer, Négrel; and these

two men, with their contempt for each other--the rebellious workman and

the sceptical master--threw themselves on each other's necks, sobbing

loudly in the deep upheaval of all the humanity within them. It was an

immense sadness, the misery of generations, the extremity of grief into

which life can fall.

At the surface, Maheude, stricken down near dead Catherine, uttered

a cry, then another, then another--very long, deep, incessant moans.

Several corpses had already been brought up, and placed in a row on

the ground: Chaval, who was thought to have been crushed beneath a

landslip, a trammer, and two hewers, also crushed, with brainless

skulls and bellies swollen with water. Women in the crowd went out of

their minds, tearing their skirts and scratching their faces. When

Étienne was at last taken out, after having been accustomed to the

lamps and fed a little, he appeared fleshless, and his hair was quite

white. People turned away and shuddered at this old man. Maheude left

off crying to stare at him stupidly with her large fixed eyes.

CHAPTER VI

It was four o'clock in the morning, and the fresh April night was

growing warm at the approach of day. In the limpid sky the stars were

twinkling out, while the east grew purple with dawn. And a slight

shudder passed over the drowsy black country, the vague rumour which

precedes awakening.

Étienne, with long strides, was following the Vandame road. He had

just passed six weeks at Montsou, in bed at the hospital. Though very

thin and yellow, he felt strength to go, and he went. The Company,

still trembling for its pits, was constantly sending men away, and had

given him notice that he could not be kept on. He was offered the sum

of one hundred francs, with the paternal advice to leave off working

in mines, as it would now be too severe for him. But he refused the

hundred francs. He had already received a letter from Pluchart, calling

him to Paris, and enclosing money for the journey. His old dream would

be realized. The night before, on leaving the hospital, he had slept at

the Bon-Joyeux, Widow Désir's. And he rose early; only one desire was

left, to bid his mates farewell before taking the eight o'clock train

at Marchiennes.

For a moment Étienne stopped on the road, which was now becoming

rose-coloured. It was good to breathe that pure air of the precocious

spring. It would turn out a superb day. The sun was slowly rising, and

the life of the earth was rising with it. And he set out walking again,

vigorously striking with his brier stick, watching the plain afar, as

it rose from the vapours of the night. He had seen no one; Maheude had

come once to the hospital, and, probably, had not been able to come

again. But he knew that the whole settlement of the Deux-Cent-Quarante

was now going down at Jean-Bart, and that she too had taken work there.

Little by little the deserted roads were peopled, and colliers

constantly passed Étienne with pallid, silent faces. The Company,

people said, was abusing its victory. After two and a half months

of strike, when they had returned to the pits, conquered by hunger,

they had been obliged to accept the timbering tariff, that disguised

decrease in wages, now the more hateful because stained with the

blood of their mates. They were being robbed of an hour's work, they

were being made false to their oath never to submit; and this imposed

perjury stuck in their throats like gall. Work was beginning again

everywhere, at Mirou, at Madeleine, at Crévecoeur, at the Victoire.

Everywhere, in the morning haze, along the roads lost in darkness, the

flock was tramping on, rows of men trotting with faces bent towards the

earth, like cattle led to the slaughter-house. They shivered beneath

their thin garments, folding their arms, rolling their hips, expanding

their backs with the humps formed by the brick between the shirt

and the jacket. And in this wholesale return to work, in these mute

shadows, all black, without a laugh, without a look aside, one felt

the teeth clenched with rage, the hearts swollen with hatred, a simple

resignation to the necessity of the belly.

The nearer Étienne approached the pit the more their number increased.

They nearly all walked alone; those who came in groups were in single

file, already exhausted, tired of one another and of themselves. He

noticed one who was very old, with eyes that shone like hot coals

beneath his livid forehead. Another, a young man, was panting with the

restrained fury of a storm. Many had their sabots in their hands; one

could scarcely hear the soft sound of their coarse woollen stockings on

the ground. It was an endless rustling, a general downfall, the forced

march of a beaten army, moving on with lowered heads, sullenly absorbed

in the desire to renew the struggle and achieve revenge.

When Étienne arrived, Jean-Bart was emerging from the shade; the

lanterns, hooked on to the platform, were still burning in the

growing dawn. Above the obscure buildings a trail of steam arose

like a white plume delicately tinted with carmine. He passed up

the sifting-staircase to go to the receiving-room. The descent was

beginning, and the men were coming from the shed. For a moment he stood

by, motionless amid the noise and movement. The rolling of the trams

shook the metal floor, the drums were turning, unrolling the cables in

the midst of cries from the trumpet, the ringing of bells, blows of

the mallet on the signal block; he found the monster again swallowing

his daily ration of human flesh, the cages rising and plunging,

engulfing their burden of men, without ceasing, with the facile gulp of

a voracious giant. Since his accident he had a nervous horror of the

mine. The cages, as they sank down, tore his bowels. He had to turn

away his head; the pit exasperated him.

But in the vast and still sombre hall, feebly lighted up by the

exhausted lanterns, he could perceive no friendly face. The miners,

who were waiting there with bare feet and their lamps in their hands,

looked at him with large restless eyes, and then lowered their faces,

drawing back with an air of shame. No doubt they knew him and no longer

had any spite against him; they seemed, on the contrary, to fear him,

blushing at the thought that he would reproach them with cowardice.

This attitude made his heart swell; he forgot that these wretches had

stoned him, he again began to dream of changing them into heroes, of

directing a whole people, this force of nature which was devouring

itself. A cage was embarking its men, and the batch disappeared; as

others arrived he saw at last one of his lieutenants in the strike, a

worthy fellow who had sworn to die.

"You too!" he murmured, with aching heart.

The other turned pale and his lips trembled; then, with a movement of

excuse:

"What would you have? I've got a wife."

Now in the new crowd coming from the shed he recognized them all.

"You too!--you too!--you too!"

And all shrank back, stammering in choked voices:

"I have a mother."--"I have children."--"One must get bread."

The cage did not reappear; they waited for it mournfully, with such

sorrow at their defeat that they avoided meeting each other's eyes,

obstinately gazing at the shaft.

"And Maheude?" Étienne asked.

They made no reply. One made a sign that she was coming. Others raised

their arms, trembling with pity. Ah, poor woman! what wretchedness!

The silence continued, and when Étienne stretched out his hand to bid

them farewell, they all pressed it vigorously, putting into that mute

squeeze their rage at having yielded, their feverish hope of revenge.

The cage was there; they got into it and sank, devoured by the gulf.

Pierron had appeared with his naked captain's lamp fixed into the

leather of his cap. For the past week he had been chief of the gang

at the pit-eye, and the men moved away, for promotion had rendered

him bossy. The sight of Étienne annoyed him; he came up, however, and

was at last reassured when the young man announced his departure.

They talked. His wife now kept the Estaminet du Progrés, thanks to

the support of all those gentlemen, who had been so good to her. But

he interrupted himself and turned furiously on to Father Mouque,

whom he accused of not sending up the dung-heap from his stable at

the regulation hour. The old man listened with bent shoulders. Then,

before going down, suffering from this reprimand, he, too, gave his

hand to Étienne, with the same long pressure as the others, warm with

restrained anger and quivering with future rebellion. And this old hand

which trembled in his, this old man who was forgiving him for the loss

of his dead children, affected Étienne to such a degree that he watched

him disappear without saying a word.

"Then Maheude is not coming this morning?" he asked Pierron after a

time.

At first the latter pretended not to understand, for there was ill luck

even in speaking of her. Then, as he moved away, under the pretext of

giving an order, he said at last:

"Eh! Maheude? There she is."

In fact, Maheude had reached the shed with her lamp in her hand,

dressed in trousers and jacket, with her head confined in the cap. It

was by a charitable exception that the Company, pitying the fate of

this unhappy woman, so cruelly afflicted, had allowed her to go down

again at the age of forty; and as it seemed difficult to set her again

at haulage work, she was employed to manipulate a small ventilator

which had been installed in the north gallery, in those infernal

regions beneath Tartaret, where there was no movement of air. For

ten hours, with aching back, she turned her wheel at the bottom of a

burning tube, baked by forty degrees of heat. She earned thirty sous.

When Étienne saw her, a pitiful sight in her male garments--her breast

and belly seeming to be swollen by the dampness of the cuttings--he

stammered with surprise, trying to find words to explain that he was

going away and that he wished to say good-bye to her.

She looked at him without listening, and said at last, speaking

familiarly:

"Eh? it surprises you to see me. It's true enough that I threatened to

wring the neck of the first of my children who went down again; and now

that I'm going down I ought to wring my own, ought I not? Ah, well! I

should have done it by now if it hadn't been for the old man and the

little ones at the house."

And she went on in her low, fatigued voice. She did not excuse herself,

she simply narrated things--that they had been nearly starved, and that

she had made up her mind to it, so that they might not be sent away

from the settlement.

"How is the old man?" asked Étienne.

"He is always very gentle and very clean. But he is quite off his nut.

He was not brought up for that affair, you know. There was talk of

shutting him up with the madmen, but I was not willing; they would have

done for him in his soup. His story has, all the same, been very bad

for us, for he'll never get his pension; one of those gentlemen told me

that it would be immoral to give him one."

"Is Jeanlin working?"

"Yes, those gentlemen found something for him to do at the top. He gets

twenty sous. Oh! I don't complain; the bosses have been very good, as

they told me themselves. The brat's twenty sous and my thirty, that

makes fifty. If there were not six of us we should get enough to eat.

Estelle devours now, and the worst is that it will be four or five

years before Lénore and Henri are old enough to come to the pit."

Étienne could not restrain a movement of pain.

"They, too!"

Maheude's pale cheeks turned red, and her eyes flamed. But her

shoulders sank as if beneath the weight of destiny.

"What would you have? They after the others. They have all been done

for there; now it's their turn."

She was silent; some landers, who were rolling trams, disturbed them.

Through the large dusty windows the early sun was entering, drowning

the lanterns in grey light; and the engine moved every three minutes,

the cables unrolled, the cages continued to swallow down men.

"Come along, you loungers, look sharp!" shouted Pierron. "Get in; we

shall never have done with it today."

Maheude, whom he was looking at, did not stir. She had already allowed

three cages to pass, and she said, as though arousing herself and

remembering Étienne's first words:

"Then you're going away?"

"Yes, this morning."

"You're right; better be somewhere else if one can. And I'm glad to

have seen you, because you can know now, anyhow, that I've nothing on

my mind against you. For a moment I could have killed you, after all

that slaughter. But one thinks, doesn't one? One sees that when all's

reckoned up it's nobody's fault. No, no! it's not your fault; it's the

fault of everybody."

Now she talked with tranquillity of her dead, of her man, of Zacharie,

of Catherine; and tears only came into her eyes when she uttered

Alzire's name. She had resumed her calm reasonableness, and judged

things sensibly. It would bring no luck to the middle class to have

killed so many poor people. Sure enough, they would be punished for it

one day, for everything has to be paid for. There would even be no need

to interfere; the whole thing would explode by itself. The soldiers

would fire on the masters just as they had fired on the men. And in her

everlasting resignation, in that hereditary discipline under which she

was again bowing, a conviction had established itself, the certainty

that injustice could not last longer, and that, if there were no good

God left, another would spring up to avenge the wretched.

She spoke in a low voice, with suspicious glances round. Then, as

Pierron was coming up, she added, aloud:

"Well, if you're going, you must take your things from our house. There

are still two shirts, three handkerchiefs, and an old pair of trousers."

Étienne, with a gesture, refused these few things saved from the

dealers.

"No, it's not worth while; they can be for the children. At Paris I can

arrange for myself."

Two more cages had gone down, and Pierron decided to speak straight to

Maheude.

"I say now, over there, they are waiting for you! Is that little chat

nearly done?"

But she turned her back. Why should he be so zealous, this man who

had sold himself? The descent didn't concern him. His men hated him

enough already on his level. And she persisted, with her lamp in her

hand, frozen amid the draughts in spite of the mildness of the season.

Neither Étienne nor she found anything more to say. They remained

facing each other with hearts so full that they would have liked to

speak once more.

At last she spoke for the sake of speaking.

"The Levaque is in the family way. Levaque is still in prison;

Bouteloup is taking his place meanwhile."

"Ah, yes! Bouteloup."

"And, listen! did I tell you? Philoméne has gone away."

"What! gone away?"

"Yes, gone away with a Pas-de-Calais miner. I was afraid she would

leave the two brats on me. But no, she took them with her. Eh? A woman

who spits blood and always looks as if she were on the point of death!"

She mused for a moment, and then went on in a slow voice:

"There's been talk on my account. You remember they said I slept with

you. Lord! After my man's death that might very well have happened if

I had been younger. But now I'm glad it wasn't so, for we should have

regretted it, sure enough."

"Yes, we should have regretted it," Étienne repeated, simply.

That was all; they spoke no more. A cage was waiting for her; she was

being called angrily, threatened with a fine. Then she made up her

mind, and pressed his hand. Deeply moved, he still looked at her, so

worn and worked out, with her livid face, her discoloured hair escaping

from the blue cap, her body as of a good over-fruitful beast, deformed

beneath the jacket and trousers. And in this last pressure of the

hands he felt again the long, silent pressure of his mates, giving him

a rendezvous for the day when they would begin again. He understood

perfectly. There was a tranquil faith in the depths of her eyes. It

would be soon, and this time it would be the final blow.

"What a damned shammer!" exclaimed Pierron.

Pushed and hustled, Maheude squeezed into a tram with four others. The

signal-cord was drawn to strike for meat, the cage was unhooked and

fell into the night, and there was nothing more but the rapid flight of

the cable.

Then Étienne left the pit. Below, beneath the screening-shed, he

noticed a creature seated on the earth, with legs stretched out, in the

midst of a thick pile of coal. It was Jeanlin, who was employed there

to clean the large coal. He held a block of coal between his thighs,

and freed it with a hammer from the fragments of slate. A fine powder

drowned him in such a flood of soot that the young man would never have

recognized him if the child had not lifted his ape-like face, with the

protruding ears and small greenish eyes. He laughed, with a joking air,

and, giving a final blow to the block, disappeared in the black dust

which arose.

Outside, Étienne followed the road for a while, absorbed in his

thoughts. All sorts of ideas were buzzing in his head. But he felt the

open air, the free sky, and he breathed deeply. The sun was appearing

in glory at the horizon, there was a reawakening of gladness over the

whole country. A flood of gold rolled from the east to the west on

the immense plain. This heat of life was expanding and extending in a

tremor of youth, in which vibrated the sighs of the earth, the song of

birds, all the murmuring sounds of the waters and the woods. It was

good to live, and the old world wanted to live through one more spring.

And penetrated by that hope, Étienne slackened his walk, his eyes

wandering to right and to left amid the gaiety of the new season. He

thought about himself, he felt himself strong, seasoned by his hard

experiences at the bottom of the mine. His education was complete, he

was going away armed, a rational soldier of the revolution, having

declared war against society as he saw it and as he condemned it. The

joy of rejoining Pluchart and of being, like Pluchart, a leader who was

listened to, inspired him with speeches, and he began to arrange the

phrases. He was meditating an enlarged programme; that middle-class

refinement, which had raised him above his class, had deepened his

hatred of the middle class. He felt the need of glorifying these

workers, whose odour of wretchedness was now unpleasant to him; he

would show that they alone were great and stainless, the only nobility

and the only strength in which humanity could be dipped afresh. He

already saw himself in the tribune, triumphing with the people, if the

people did not devour him.

The loud song of a lark made him look up towards the sky. Little red

clouds, the last vapours of the night, were melting in the limpid

blue; and the vague faces of Souvarine and Rasseneur came to his

memory. Decidedly, all was spoilt when each man tried to get power

for himself. Thus that famous International which was to have renewed

the world had impotently miscarried, and its formidable army had been

cut up and crumbled away from internal dissensions. Was Darwin right,

then, and the world only a battlefield, where the strong ate the weak

for the sake of the beauty and continuance of the race? This question

troubled him, although he settled it like a man who is satisfied

with his knowledge. But one idea dissipated his doubts and enchanted

him--that of taking up his old explanation of the theory the first time

that he should speak. If any class must be devoured, would not the

people, still new and full of life, devour the middle class, exhausted

by enjoyment? The new society would arise from new blood. And in this

expectation of an invasion of barbarians, regenerating the old decayed

nations, reappeared his absolute faith in an approaching revolution,

the real one--that of the workers--the fire of which would inflame this

century's end with that purple of the rising sun which he saw like

blood on the sky.

He still walked, dreaming, striking his brier stick against the flints

on the road, and when he glanced around him he recognized the various

places. Just there, at the Fourche-aux-Boeufs, he remembered that he

had taken command of the band that morning when the pits were sacked.

Today the brutish, deathly, ill-paid work was beginning over again.

Beneath the earth, down there at seven hundred metres, it seemed to him

he heard low, regular, continuous blows; it was the men he had just

seen go down, the black workers, who were hammering in their silent

rage. No doubt they were beaten. They had left their dead and their

money on the field; but Paris would not forget the volleys fired at

the Voreux, and the blood of the empire, too, would flow from that

incurable wound. And if the industrial crisis was drawing to an end,

if the workshops were opening again one by one, a state of war was

no less declared, and peace was henceforth impossible. The colliers

had reckoned up their men; they had tried their strength, with their

cry for justice arousing the workers all over France. Their defeat,

therefore, reassured no one. The Montsou bourgeois, in their victory,

felt the vague uneasiness that arises on the morrow of a strike,

looking behind them to see if their end did not lie inevitably over

there, in spite of all beyond that great silence. They understood that

the revolution would be born again unceasingly, perhaps to-morrow,

with a general strike--the common understanding of all workers having

general funds, and so able to hold out for months, eating their own

bread. This time a push only had been given to a ruinous society, but

they had heard the rumbling beneath their feet, and they felt more

shocks arising, and still more, until the old edifice would be crushed,

fallen in and swallowed, going down like the Voreux to the abyss.

Étienne took the Joiselle road, to the left. He remembered that he had

prevented the band from rushing on to Gaston-Marie. Afar, in the clear

sky he saw the steeples of several pits--Mirou to the right, Madeleine

and Crévecoeur side by side. Work was going on everywhere; he seemed

to be able to catch the blows of the pick at the bottom of the earth,

striking now from one end of the plain to the other, one blow, and

another blow, and yet more blows, beneath the fields and roads and

villages which were laughing in the light, all the obscure labour of

the underground prison, so crushed by the enormous mass of the rocks

that one had to know it was underneath there to distinguish its great

painful sigh. And he now thought that, perhaps, violence would not

hasten things. Cutting cables, tearing up rails, breaking lamps, what a

useless task it was! It was not worth while for three thousand men to

rush about in a devastating band doing that. He vaguely divined that

lawful methods might one day be more terrible. His reason was ripening,

he had sown the wild oats of his spite. Yes, Maheude had well said,

with her good sense, that that would be the great blow--to organize

quietly, to know one another, to unite in associations when the laws

would permit it; then, on the morning when they felt their strength,

and millions of workers would be face to face with a few thousand

idlers, to take the power into their own hands and become the masters.

Ah! what a reawakening of truth and justice! The sated and crouching

god would at once get his death-blow, the monstrous idol hidden in the

depths of his sanctuary, in that unknown distance where poor wretches

fed him with their flesh without ever having seen him.

But Étienne, leaving the Vandame road, now came on to the paved street.

On the right he saw Montsou, which was lost in the valley. Opposite

were the ruins of the Voreux, the accursed hole where three pumps

worked unceasingly. Then there were the other pits at the horizon, the

Victoire, Saint-Thomas, Feutry-Cantel; while, towards the north, the

tall chimneys of the blast furnaces, and the batteries of coke ovens,

were smoking in the transparent morning air. If he was not to lose the

eight o'clock train he must hasten, for he had still six kilometres

before him.

And beneath his feet, the deep blows, those obstinate blows of the

pick, continued. The mates were all there; he heard them following him

at every stride. Was not that Maheude beneath the beetroots, with bent

back and hoarse respiration accompanying the rumble of the ventilator?

To left, to right, farther on, he seemed to recognize others beneath

the wheatfields, the hedges, the young trees. Now the April sun, in the

open sky, was shining in his glory, and warming the pregnant earth.

From its fertile flanks life was leaping out, buds were bursting into

green leaves, and the fields were quivering with the growth of the

grass. On every side seeds were swelling, stretching out, cracking the

plain, filled by the need of heat and light. An overflow of sap was

mixed with whispering voices, the sound of the germs expanding in a

great kiss. Again and again, more and more distinctly, as though they

were approaching the soil, the mates were hammering. In the fiery rays

of the sun on this youthful morning the country seemed full of that

sound. Men were springing forth, a black avenging army, germinating

slowly in the furrows, growing towards the harvests of the next

century, and their germination would soon overturn the earth.