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By Root 1724 0

The Filonnière seam narrowed so much at this point that the hewers were wedged between the face itself and the ceiling and kept grazing their elbows as they extracted the coal. Also it was becoming very wet, and with every hour that passed they became more and more anxious about being flooded by one of those sudden torrents that can burst through the rock and sweep a man away. The previous day, when Étienne was pulling his pick out of the rock, having driven it in hard, water suddenly spurted out from a spring and hit him in the face; but this was no more than an early warning, and it simply left the coal-face wetter and muckier than before. Anyway he hardly ever thought about the possibility of an accident now and simply worked away down there with his comrades, oblivious to the danger. They lived in firedamp, not even noticing how it weighed on their eyelids and veiled their eyelashes like a cobweb. Sometimes, when the flame in their lamps turned paler and bluer, they did think about it, and one of the miners would put his ear to the seam and listen to the faint hiss of the gas, which sounded as though air bubbles were fizzing from each crack in the rock. But rock-falls were the one real and constant threat since, apart from the fact that the timbering was botched from being done in a hurry, the earth itself was unstable on account of the water running through it.

Three times that day Maheu had been forced to make them strengthen the timbering. It was half past two, and it would soon be time to return to the surface. Étienne, lying on his side, was just finishing cutting out a block of coal when a distant rumble of thunder shook the entire mine.

‘What the hell’s that?’ he shouted, dropping his pick to listen.

He thought the whole road was caving in behind him.

But already Maheu was slithering down the slope of the coal-face and shouting:

‘It’s a fall! Quick! Hurry!’

They all slid down as fast as they could, in a rush of anxious concern for their fellow-miners. A terrible silence had fallen, and the lamps bobbed up and down in their hands as they raced along the roads in single file, bending so low that it was almost as if they were galloping on all fours. Without slackening speed they exchanged rapid question and answer: whereabouts? Up here by the coal-faces? No, it came from lower down! Near the haulage roadway more like! When they reached the chimney, they plunged down it one on top of the other, heedless of the bruises.

Jeanlin, his bottom still red from the previous day’s thrashing, had not tried to escape his work that day. He was busy trotting along barefoot behind his train, shutting the ventilation doors one by one. Sometimes, when he thought there were no deputies around, he would climb up on to the last tub, which he’d been told not to do in case he fell asleep on it. But his main source of amusement was, each time the train pulled in to let another one pass, to set off and find Bébert, who was up at the front holding the reins. He would sneak up on him, without his lamp, and pinch him hard, or else he would play tricks on him, looking like some evil monkey with his yellow hair and big ears and his thin, pointed face with its little green eyes that glowed in the dark. Unnaturally precocious for his years, he seemed to have the instinctual intelligence and quick dexterity of some freakish human runt which had reverted to its original animal state.

That afternoon Mouque brought Battle along to do his stint with the pit-boys; and while the horse was taking a breather in a siding, Jeanlin crept up behind Bébert and asked:

‘What’s wrong with the old nag, stopping dead like that?…He’ll make me break a leg one day.’

Bébert could not answer; he was having to restrain Battle, who was becoming excited at the approach of the other train. The horse had caught the scent in the distance of his comrade, Trumpet, for whom he had developed a deep affection ever since the day he had seen him arrive at pit-bottom. His was the warm compassion of an elderly philosopher wanting to comfort a young friend by imbuing him with