Germinal - Emile Zola [251]
Then, using his brace, he loosened the screws in the brackets so that one last push would tear them all out. This was an extremely risky job, and twenty times or more he nearly lost his balance and plunged down the hundred and eighty metres to the bottom. He had had to grab hold of the oak guides along which the cages travelled up and down, and then, suspended above the void, he moved back and forth along the crossbeams by which these vertical rails were connected at intervals; he would slide along or sit or lean over backwards, with only an elbow or a knee for support, coolly contemptuous of death. The merest draught of air could have sent him flying, and three times he caught himself just in time, unfazed. First he would feel about with his hand, then he would set to, lighting a match only when he had lost his bearings among the greasy beams. Having loosened the screws he set about the tubbing itself; and the danger grew. He had sought out the one key piece of timbering that jammed the others in place, and he attacked it, drilling holes in it, sawing at it, and gradually making it thinner so as to lessen its resistance. And all the time the water continued to spurt in thin jets from every crack and chink, blinding him and soaking him in an icy rain. Two matches failed to light properly. They were all wet now, and it was pitch dark, a bottomless chasm of blackness.
From this point on he was seized with fury. He was exhilarated to feel the breath of the invisible on his skin, and the black horror of this rainswept abyss drove him to a frenzy of destruction. He attacked the tubbing at random, striking where he could, with his brace, with his saw, suddenly determined to rip it open and bring everything crashing down on his head. And he did so with the ferocity of a man plunging a knife into the living flesh of a person he loathed. He would kill it in the end, this foul beast that was Le Voreux, with its ever-gaping maw that had devoured so much human fodder. The sound of his tools rang out, biting into the wood; he stretched, he crawled, he climbed up, he climbed down, always managing by some miracle or other to hang on, ceaseless in his movement like a bird of the night flitting among the rafters of a bell-tower.
But gradually he grew calmer, and then he was cross with himself. Was he incapable of proceeding with due deliberation? Calmly he paused to recover his breath and then returned to the escape shaft, where he blocked the hole by replacing the panel he had sawn out. Enough was enough, he didn’t want to give the game away by creating too much damage, which they would only have tried to repair at once. The beast had been wounded in its belly, and it remained to be seen whether it would survive the day. Moreover, he had left his signature: a horrified world would know that this was no death from natural causes. He took his time wrapping his tools carefully in his jacket, and slowly he climbed back up the ladders. Once he had left the pit without being seen, it didn’t even occur to him to go and change his clothes. Three o’clock struck. He just stood in the road and waited.
At that same hour Étienne, who had been unable to sleep, was disturbed by a slight noise in the thick darkness of the room. He could hear the gentle breathing of the children and the snores of Bonnemort and La Maheude, while next to him Jeanlin was making a long-drawn-out whistling sound, like a flute. He must have dreamed it, and he was just resuming his attempts to go to sleep when he heard the noise again. It was the sound of a mattress creaking, as though someone were trying to get out of bed without being heard. He supposed that Catherine must be feeling unwell.
‘Is that you? What’s the matter?’ he whispered.
There was no reply, only the snoring could still be heard. For the next five minutes