Germinal - Emile Zola [34]
Maheu had to request a lamp for his new putter. Then came one last safety measure: the miners were required to file past a man who checked that all the lamps were securely closed.
‘Blimey! It’s not very warm in here,’ Catherine muttered, shivering.
Étienne simply shook his head. He was standing in front of the pit-shaft, in the middle of the huge, draughty hall. He considered himself as brave as the next man, but he was unnerved by the rumble of the tubs, the dull thud of the signals, the muffled bellowing of the loudhailer, and the sight of the constantly whirring cables as they were wound and unwound at full steam by the spools of the winding-engine. Up and down the cages went, like stealthy beasts of the night, swallowing men by the mouthful as they disappeared down the black throat of the mine. It was his turn now. He was very cold and said nothing as he waited anxiously, which made Zacharie and Levaque snigger; for they both disapproved of the stranger being taken on like this, Levaque especially, who felt hurt at not being consulted. So Catherine was pleased to hear her father explaining things to the young man.
‘Can you see, up there, above the cage? There’s a safety brake, iron hooks that dig into the guides if the cable breaks. It works. Well, most of the time anyway…The shaft itself is divided vertically into three sections by wooden planks. In the middle are the cages, on the left is the emergency shaft where there are ladders – ’
He broke off to complain, though without raising his voice too loudly:
‘What’s the hold-up, for God’s sake! It’s bloody freezing in here!’
Richomme, the deputy, was waiting to go down also, with his open lamp fixed on to a stud in his leather cap, and he heard Maheu complaining.
‘Careful! Walls have ears!’ he muttered paternally with the voice of one who used to be a coal-getter and whose sympathies still lay with his comrades. ‘All in good time…Anyway, here we go. In you get with the rest of your team.’
The cage was indeed now waiting for them, locked into its keeps, its thin wire mesh clamped in bands of sheet metal. Maheu, Zacharie, Levaque and Catherine slipped into a tub at the back and, since this took five people, Étienne climbed in also; but the best places had been taken, and he had to squash in next to the girl, whose elbow stuck into his stomach. His lamp was getting in the way, and they told him to hang it from a buttonhole in his jacket. But he didn’t hear, and continued to hold on to it awkwardly. The loading continued, above and below them, as though a herd of animals was being shovelled pell-mell into a furnace. Why hadn’t they left? What was happening? Étienne felt as if they’d already been waiting for hours. Finally there was a jolt, and they were engulfed; his surroundings took flight, and a giddy sensation clutched at his stomach as they fell. This lasted for as long as they could still see, down past the two levels where the coal was off-loaded, with the shaft lining whizzing past in a blur. As they plunged down the pit into total darkness, he became dizzy and lost all sense of reality.
‘We’re away,’ Maheu said simply.
Everyone was calm. Occasionally Étienne wondered if he was going up or down. There were moments when they seemed not to be moving at all as the cage went straight down without touching the guides on either side; and then suddenly these wooden beams would start vibrating, as though they had come loose, and he would be