Germinal - Emile Zola [273]
Rock-falls could be heard all the time. The whole mine had been profoundly disturbed, and its frail intestines were bursting under the pressure of the enormous quantity of water it had imbibed. The air was being pushed back to the end of each roadway, where it accumulated in compressed pockets and then exploded with tremendous force, splitting the rock and convulsing its formations. It was the terrifying noise of subterranean cataclysm, a reminder of the ancient battles between earth and water when great floods turned the land inside out and buried mountains beneath the plains.
Catherine, shaken and dazed by this continual collapse, pressed her hands together and kept burbling the same words over and over again:
‘I don’t want to die…I don’t want to die…’
To reassure her, Étienne swore that the water was no longer rising. They had been running away from it for six hours now, somebody was bound to come and rescue them. Six hours was a pure guess, for neither of them had any real idea what time it was. In fact a whole day had passed while they were clambering up through the Guillaume seam.
Soaked to the skin, their teeth chattering, they tried to make themselves comfortable. Catherine took off her clothes, without embarrassment, in order to wring the water out of them; then she put her trousers and jacket back on, and they dried on her body. She was barefoot, and Étienne made her put on his clogs. They could settle down to wait now, and they lowered the wick on the lamp till it gave off no more than the faint gleam of a night-light. But their stomachs were racked by cramps, and they both realized that they were dying of hunger. Until that moment they had been quite oblivious to how they felt. When disaster had struck, they had not yet eaten their lunch, and now they had just found their sandwiches, soaking wet and turned to sops. Catherine had to get cross with Étienne before he would take his share. As soon as she had eaten, she fell asleep with exhaustion on the cold ground. Étienne, tormentedly unable to sleep, sat watching over her, his head in his hands, staring into space.
How many hours went by like this? He could not have said. But what he did know was that there in front of him, at the mouth of the chimney, he could see the black water moving, like a beast arching its back higher and higher to reach them. At first, it was just a thin trickle, like a writhing snake straightening out; then it grew into the swarming, crawling spine of an animal; and then it caught up with them, wetting Catherine’s feet as she slept. He was anxious not to wake her. It would surely be cruel to rouse her from her rest and from her blissful unawareness, perhaps even from pleasant dreams of fresh air and life in the sunshine. And anyway, where could they go now? He thought for a while, and then he remembered that the top of the incline serving this part of the seam connected with the foot of the incline serving the level above. It was a way out. He let her sleep on for as long as possible, watching the water rise and waiting till it chased them on. Eventually he lifted her gently, and she gave a great shudder:
‘Oh, my God! So it’s true!…It hasn’t stopped. Oh, my God!’ She had remembered where she was, and she screamed to find death so close.
‘No, no, it’s all right,’ he said softly. ‘There’s a way through. I promise you.’
In order to reach the incline they had to walk bent over double and so once more found themselves up to their shoulders in water. Another climb began, a more dangerous one this time, up through