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By Root 1742 0

the fifty-ninth ladder. Forty-three to go. Catherine eventually gasped that she was just about managing. He would have called her a lazy bitch again if she had told him how exhausted she was. The iron on the rungs must be biting into her feet, because she felt as though they were being sawn through to the bone. Each time she moved her hands up the ladder she expected to see them lose their grip and come away so raw and stiff that she could no longer clench her fingers; and she felt as though she were falling backwards, as though her arms and hips had been wrenched from their sockets by the constant effort. What she found most difficult was the lack of angle on the ladders, the fact that they were almost vertical and that she had to pull herself up by her wrists with her stomach pressed hard against the wood. The sound of people gasping for breath now drowned out the tramping of feet; and a vast wheezing, made ten times louder by the partitioning of the shaft, rose from the bottom and died away at the top. There was a groan of pain, then word came down that a pit-boy had cracked his head underneath one of the platform landings.

And up Catherine went. They passed the water-table. The deluge had ceased, and now the cellar-like air was thick with mist and the musty stench of old iron and rotting wood. She persisted in counting quietly and mechanically to herself under her breath: eighty-one, eighty-two, eighty-three, nineteen to go. Only the steady rhythm of the repeated numbers kept her going, for she had ceased to be conscious of her movements. When she looked up, the lamps spiralled into the distance. Her blood was draining away, and she felt as though she were dying, as though the merest draught would send her flying. The worst of it was that people were now pushing and shoving their way up from below, and the whole column was on the stampede, yielding in its exhaustion to growing anger and a desperate need to see daylight again. The first comrades were out of the shaft, so no ladders had been smashed; but the thought that they still could be – to prevent the remainder from getting out while others were already up there breathing the fresh air – was enough to drive them into a frenzy. And when there was a further hold-up, people started cursing and continued to climb anyway, elbowing others aside or clambering over them in a general free-for-all.

Then Catherine fell. She had shouted out Chaval’s name in one last desperate appeal. He didn’t hear her, he was too busy fighting and kicking a comrade’s ribs with his heels to make sure he stayed ahead of him. She was trodden underfoot. In her unconscious state she dreamed that she was one of the young putters from long ago and that a piece of coal had dropped out of a basket above her and pitched her into the shaft like a sparrow felled by a stone. Only five ladders remained to be climbed, and so far it had taken them nearly an hour. She had no memory of how she reached the surface, borne aloft on people’s shoulders and prevented from falling only by the narrowness of the shaft. Suddenly she found herself in the blinding sunlight surrounded by a noisy crowd of people who were all jeering at her.

III

That morning, since before daybreak, there had been a stirring in the villages, a stirring which was now growing and spreading along the highways and byways of the entire region. But the miners had not been able to set out as planned because it was rumoured that the plain was being patrolled by dragoons and gendarmes. It was said that they had arrived from Douai during the night, and some accused Rasseneur of having betrayed the comrades by warning M. Hennebeau; one putter even swore blind that she had seen his servant taking the message to the telegraph office. The miners clenched their fists and watched out for the soldiers behind their shutters in the pale light of dawn.

At about seven-thirty, as the sun was rising, another rumour circulated, which reassured the impatient. It had been a false alarm, simply a military exercise of the kind that the general had occasionally