Germinal - Emile Zola [256]
There followed a terrible stampede. Miners came streaming out of every roadway, pushing and shoving as they made for the cages, crushing each other and ready to kill the next man if they could just get taken up at once. Some had tried to go up by the escape shaft, but they came back down again shouting that it was already blocked. With each cage that departed the nightmare began for those who remained: that one had got past all right, but who could say if the next one would, what with all the debris now blocking the shaft? Up above them the tubbing must have been continuing to disintegrate because, amid the continuous and growing roar of cascading water, they heard a series of muffled explosions, which was the timbers splitting and bursting. One cage was soon out of action: it had been severely dented and would no longer run smoothly on the guides, which in any case had probably been broken. The other was catching so badly that the cable was bound to snap soon. And there were still a hundred men to be got out, all of them screaming their heads off and struggling to get nearest to a cage, each one covered in blood and soaked to the skin. Two men were killed by falling planks. A third, who had grabbed hold of the cage from below, had fallen fifty metres and disappeared into the sump.
Dansaert, meanwhile, was trying to restore order. Armed with a pick, he was threatening to smash the skull of the first man who disobeyed him; and he endeavoured to get everyone to form a queue, shouting out that the onsetters would be the last to leave once they had seen their comrades safely away. Nobody was listening to him, indeed he had just stopped a pale and frightened Pierron from being one of the first to make his escape. Each time the cage left he had to strike him to make him stand back. But his own teeth were chattering; a minute longer, and they’d all be buried alive: everything was giving way up there, it was as though a river had burst its banks, and bits of tubbing were raining down murderously on those below. A few miners were still left when, crazed with fear, he jumped into a tub and let Pierron jump in behind him. The cage rose.
At that very moment Étienne and Chaval’s team reached pit-bottom. They saw the cage disappear and rushed forward; but they were driven back as the tubbing finally gave way altogether. The shaft was blocked, the cage would not be coming down again. Catherine was sobbing, and Chaval swore till he choked. There were twenty of them left: were those bloody bosses just going to abandon them here like this? Old Mouque, having led Battle slowly back, was still standing there holding him by the bridle; and the pair of them, the old man and the horse, gazed in astonishment at the speed with which the floodwater was rising. Already it had reached thigh level. Étienne said nothing but gritted his teeth and picked Catherine up in his arms. And the twenty of them were screaming, their faces upturned, twenty people stubbornly gazing like imbeciles at a shaft that was now a collapsed hole in the ground spewing forth a river and from which there could be no further hope of rescue.
On emerging into the daylight Dansaert saw Négrel hurrying towards him. As luck would have it, Mme Hennebeau had kept him at home since first thing that morning because she wanted to look through some catalogues with a view to choosing some wedding presents for Cécile. It was now ten o’clock.
‘So what’s happening?’ he shouted while still some