Germinal - Emile Zola [254]
Eventually the cage settled on its keeps, and they were told to get in. Catherine and Étienne squeezed into a tub which already contained Pierron and two hewers. Next to them, in the other tub, Chaval was busy telling old Mouque at the top of his voice how wrong management was not to use the opportunity to rid the pits of a rotten apple or two; but the old stableman, who had reverted to his usual state of weary resignation at the dog’s life he led, no longer felt angry about the death of his children and simply replied with a conciliatory gesture.
The cage was released, and they dropped quickly into the darkness. No one spoke. Suddenly, about two thirds of the way down, there was a terrible scraping noise. The ironwork creaked, and everyone was thrown on top of each other.
‘Christ Almighty!’ Étienne muttered crossly. ‘Do they want to crush us to death? What with this bloody tubbing of theirs we’ll never see daylight again. And they say they’ve fixed it!’
Nevertheless the cage had got past the obstacle. It was now descending beneath such a heavy shower of water that the miners listened with some concern to the sound of it streaming down. Had the caulking sprung many new leaks?
They asked Pierron, who had been back at work for some days, but he didn’t want to let on that he was afraid in case it was interpreted as criticism of the management; and so he replied:
‘Oh, there’s no danger! It’s always like this. They probably just haven’t had time to caulk the pichoux.’
The torrential deluge roared down on top of them, and by the time they reached pit-bottom it was like being in the middle of a waterspout. Not one deputy thought of climbing up the ladders to take a look. The pump would do the trick, and the caulkers could inspect the joints the following night. As it was, they were having enough problems reorganizing the work in the roadways. Before letting the hewers return to their individual coal-faces, the engineer had decided that for the first five days everyone would carry out urgent shoring work. Rock-falls were threatening all over the place, and the main roads had suffered so badly that the timber supports needed replacing over stretches of several hundred metres. So at pit-bottom they were forming ten-man teams, each under the direction of a deputy, and then setting them to work at the worst-affected spots. Once everyone was down, there were three hundred and twenty-two of them, about half of the total workforce when the pit was in full production.
Chaval had just become the tenth member of the team that included Étienne and Catherine. It was no accident; he had hidden behind his comrades and then given the deputy no other option. This particular team set off to clear the far end of the northern roadway, nearly three kilometres away, where a rock-fall was blocking access to the Eighteen-Inch seam. They set to with their picks and shovels to remove the rubble. Étienne, Chaval and five others did the digging while Catherine and two pit-boys pushed the tubs full of spoil up to the incline. Nobody said much, as the deputy never left their side. Meanwhile Catherine’s two lovers were on the point of coming to blows. Though busy muttering that he had no more use for the whore, Chaval refused to leave her alone and kept knocking into her on the sly, with the result that Étienne had threatened to give him what for if he didn’t leave her in peace. They glared ferociously at each other and had to be separated.
At about eight o’clock