Germinal - Emile Zola [259]
When M. Hennebeau walked back over to the deputies, his face was twitching nervously. With a gesture of helplessness he gave the order for the pit to be evacuated at once. Everyone departed mournfully as though they were at a funeral, silently abandoning the place while glancing back from time to time at the large, empty buildings, still standing there but now beyond salvation.
The manager and the engineer were the last to leave the pit-head, and the crowd greeted them with its noisy chant:
‘Give us the names! Give us the names!’
La Maheude had now arrived to join the other women. She remembered the noise in the night: her daughter and the lodger must have left together, and they were down there for certain. Having initially screamed that it was a good job and that the heartless cowards deserved to stay there, she had then rushed to the scene and was now standing in the front row, shivering with apprehension. In any case, she no longer dared to doubt the fact, as she realized from listening to the discussion going on around her about the identity of those still down there. Yes, yes, Catherine was one of them, and Étienne too; a comrade had seen them. But opinion was still divided as to the others. No, no, not him, more likely that other chap, or perhaps Chaval, even though one of the pit-boys swore blind he’d come up with him. La Levaque and La Pierronne had nobody in danger but shouted and wailed as loudly as the rest of the women. Zacharie had been one of the first up and, despite his usual air of cynicism, had embraced his wife and mother in tears. Having remained by La Maheude’s side, he was sharing in her trembling anxiety and displaying unexpected depths of affection for his sister, refusing to believe that she was down there until management officially confirmed the fact.
‘Give us the names! For God’s sake, tell us the names!’
Négrel shouted crossly at the supervisors in a loud voice:
‘Make them be quiet, for God’s sake. Things are bad enough as they are. We don’t know the damned names yet.’
Two hours had already gone by. In the initial panic nobody had thought of the other shaft, the old one at Réquillart. M. Hennebeau was just announcing that they were going to try and mount a rescue attempt from that direction when the word went round that five men had just escaped the flooding by climbing up the rickety ladders in the disused escape shaft. The name of Mouque was mentioned, which caused some surprise since nobody had thought he was down there. But the story told by the five who had escaped brought further tears; fifteen comrades had been unable to follow them, having lost their way after being blocked by rock-falls. It would be impossible to rescue them now, for Réquillart was flooded to a depth of ten metres. They knew the names of all of them, and the air was filled with anguished lament as though an entire people had been slaughtered.
‘For God’s sake, tell them to be quiet!’ Négrel repeated furiously. ‘And make them stand back. Yes, yes, a hundred metres back. It’s dangerous here. Push them back, push them back!’
The poor people had to be driven back by force. They in turn imagined fresh horrors and thought that this was an attempt to conceal further deaths from them; the deputies had to explain that the shaft