Germinal - Emile Zola [265]
‘She’s there! She answered me! Come on, quickly!’
He had sneaked down the ladders unseen by the guard, and he swore that he’d heard tapping over in the first road in the Guillaume seam.
‘We’ve checked there twice already,’ Négrel objected in disbelief. ‘But, all right, let’s go and see.’
La Maheude had risen to her feet and had to be prevented from going down with them. She stood waiting at the edge of the shaft, staring into the dark hole.
Down below Négrel tapped three times himself, leaving a reasonable space between each tap, and then pressed his ear to the coal, bidding the men be as quiet as possible. Not a sound came, and he shook his head; the poor lad had plainly been imagining it. Zacharie tapped frantically himself, and again he did hear something; his eyes shone, and he was shaking all over with joy. Then the other men repeated the exercise, one after another; and they all became excited as they distinctly made out a response coming from far away. Négrel was astonished, and when he listened again he eventually heard the faintest of sounds, like the waft of a breeze, a barely audible rhythmic drumming that followed the familiar pattern used by miners when they tap out the signal to evacuate at times of danger. For coal can transmit crystal-clear sound over a great distance.
A deputy who was there estimated the thickness of the intervening mass of coal at not less than fifty metres. But for everyone present it was as though they could shake hands with them already, and they were elated. Négrel duly gave orders at once to dig towards them.
When Zacharie saw his mother again back above ground, they hugged each other.
‘I shouldn’t get carried away,’ La Pierronne was cruel enough to say, having come out for a walk to see what was going on. ‘If Catherine’s not there, it’ll only make it worse for you.’
It was true, Catherine might be somewhere else.
‘Mind your own bloody business!’ Zacharie said savagely. ‘She’s there all right. I know she is!’
La Maheude had resumed her seat, silent and expressionless, and once more she settled down to wait.
As soon as word reached Montsou, people again arrived in their droves. There was nothing to see, but they stayed all the same, and the more curious among them had to be kept back. Below ground, work continued round the clock. In case they met anything that completely blocked their way, Négrel had ordered three sloping shafts to be cut through the seam, which would all converge down at the point where the miners were thought to be trapped. In the cramped space at the end of each shaft there was room for only one miner at a time to cut the coal, and he was replaced every two hours; the coal itself was loaded into baskets, which were passed back along a human chain which grew longer with the shaft. They made rapid progress at first: six metres in one day.
Zacharie had managed to get himself included among those selected for the task of cutting the coal. It was a position of honour and much sought after. He would get cross when they tried to relieve him after his regulation two-hour stint, and he would pinch the comrades’ turns and refuse to relinquish his pick. His shaft was soon ahead of the others, and he attacked the coal with such ferocity that the panting and grunting coming up from below sounded like the noise of bellows in an underground forge. When he emerged, covered in black dirt and giddy with exhaustion, he would collapse on the ground and have to be covered with a blanket. Then back he would go, still staggering with exhaustion, and battle recommenced to the sound of thudding pick and muffled groan as he slew the coal in furious triumph. The worst of it was that the coal was becoming hard, and twice he broke his tool on it in his rage at not being able to go as fast as before. He was also suffering from the