Germinal - Emile Zola [271]
Mouque had let go of Battle. The old horse stood there trembling, staring wide-eyed at the rising flood. The pit-bottom was filling up rapidly, and they could see the greenish water spreading wider and wider in the red glow cast by the three lamps still burning up near the ceiling. Suddenly, as he began to feel the icy water through his coat, Battle took off at a furious gallop and disappeared down one of the haulage roads.
A rout ensued, as everyone tried to follow the horse.
‘We’ve bloody had it here!’ shouted Mouque. ‘We’ll have to try Réquillart.’
Now they were all swept along by the one idea that they might be able to get out through the adjoining disused mine if they reached it before being cut off. The twenty of them scurried along in single file, holding their lamps up high so that the water wouldn’t put them out. Fortunately the roadway sloped imperceptibly uphill, and they continued forward for two hundred metres against the flow of the current without the water-level gaining on them. Dormant superstitions sprang newly to life in their frightened souls, and they called upon the earth for mercy, this earth that was taking its revenge by spouting blood because somebody had severed one of its arteries. One old man was muttering long-forgotten prayers and crossing his fingers to calm the evil spirits of the mine.
But at the first crossroads an argument broke out. The stableman wanted to go left, while others swore that they would save time if they went right. A minute was lost.
‘You can all bloody die here if you want!’ Chaval shouted savagely. ‘I’m going this way.’
He headed off right, and two comrades followed him. The others continued to run after old Mouque, who had grown up in the Réquillart mine. But he, too, was unsure and didn’t know which direction to take. They were all losing their heads and even the older ones could no longer recognize the roads, which seemed to have twisted themselves into an inextricable knot before their very eyes. At each fork they came to, further uncertainty stopped them in their tracks, and yet they had to choose one way or the other.
Étienne was running along at the back, slowed down by Catherine, who was paralysed with fear and exhaustion. He would have gone right, with Chaval, because he thought that that was the proper direction; but he had let him go, even if it meant never getting out of the mine. In any case the rout had continued, and other comrades had gone their own way, so that now there were only seven of them behind old Mouque.
‘Put your arms round my neck and I’ll carry you,’ Étienne told Catherine, seeing her falter.
‘No, leave me be,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t go on. I’d rather die here and now.’
They had fallen fifty metres behind, and he was just picking her up, despite her resistance, when they suddenly found the way ahead blocked: an enormous slab of rock had collapsed in front of them and cut them off from the others. The floodwater was already seeping through the earth, causing subsidence everywhere. They had to retrace their steps, and soon they lost all sense of direction. This was it, there was no chance now of getting out through Réquillart. Their only hope was to reach the upper coal-faces, where somebody might come and rescue them if the floodwater fell.
Eventually Étienne recognized the Guillaume seam.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I know where we are. Christ Almighty, we were on the right track before! But that’s no bloody good to us now!…Look, let’s go straight on, and then we’ll climb up through the chimney.’
The water was lapping against their chests, and progress was very slow. As long as they had light, they would still have hope; and so they put out one of the lamps, to save on oil, intending to pour it into the other lamp later.