Germinal - Emile Zola [260]
Then the waiting began. It was midday: nobody had eaten, yet nobody left. Rust-coloured clouds passed slowly overhead in the dirty grey, overcast sky. Behind Rasseneur’s hedge a large dog was barking fiercely, without respite, unsettled by this living, breathing crowd. The crowd itself had gradually spread out over the surrounding land and formed a circle around the pit at a distance of a hundred metres. At the centre of this empty space stood Le Voreux. Not a soul was left, not a sound was to be heard: it was deserted. The windows and doors had been left open, and through them one could see the abandoned interiors. A ginger cat, which had been left behind, sensing the danger in this solitude, leaped down from a stairway and fled. The boiler fires must have barely died down because small puffs of smoke continued to rise from the tall, brick chimney towards the dark clouds above; and the weathercock on the headgear squeaked in the wind with a small, shrill cry, a sad, lonely voice amid all these vast buildings that were about to perish.
Two o’clock, and still no movement. M. Hennebeau, Négrel and other engineers who had hurried to the pit stood around in front of the crowd in a huddle of frock-coats and black hats. They, too, could not tear themselves away, though their legs were weary and they felt ill, sick at heart to be the helpless witnesses of such a disaster, and exchanging only the occasional whisper, as though they were standing by the bed of a dying man. The upper tubbing must have been in the last stages of disintegration now because they could hear sudden bangs followed by the clatter of something falling a long way and then a long silence: the gaping wound was getting wider, and the process of collapse that had begun further down was now steadily rising to the surface. Négrel was gripped with nervous impatience and kept wanting to take a look; and he was beginning to walk forward alone into that terrifying, empty space when they all grabbed him by the shoulders. What was the point? There was nothing he could do. Meanwhile a miner, one of the old hands, had got past the guards and raced across to the changing-room. But he calmly reappeared, having merely gone to fetch his clogs.
Three o’clock came. Still nothing. A shower of rain had soaked the crowd, but it had not retreated one step. Rasseneur’s dog had started barking again. And it was not until about twenty past three that the earth was shaken with the first tremor. Le Voreux shook slightly, but it was stoutly built and held firm. But a second shock followed at once, and from the open mouths of the crowd came a long scream: the screening-shed with its pitch roof tottered twice and then came tumbling down with a terrible cracking sound. Under the enormous pressure the beams split and rubbed together so violently that they gave off showers of sparks. From then on the earth never ceased to shake, and there was tremor after tremor each time the ground shifted beneath the surface, like the rumblings of an erupting volcano. In the distance the dog had stopped barking and was now howling pitifully, as though heralding the shocks which it knew to be coming; and the women and children, indeed everybody who was watching, could not refrain from a cry of distress each time they felt the earth move beneath them. In less than ten minutes the slate roof of the headgear fell in, the pit-head and the engine-house were split asunder, and a huge gap appeared in the wall. Then the