Chương Chương 3 · 第3章

Étienne had at last descended from the platform and entered the

Voreux; he spoke to men whom he met, asking if there was work to be

had, but all shook their heads, telling him to wait for the captain.

They left him free to roam through the ill-lighted buildings, full of

black holes, confusing with their complicated stories and rooms. After

having mounted a dark and half-destroyed staircase, he found himself

on a shaky foot-bridge; then he crossed the screening-shed, which

was plunged in such profound darkness that he walked with his hands

before him for protection. Suddenly two enormous yellow eyes pierced

the darkness in front of him. He was beneath the pit-frame in the

receiving-room, at the very mouth of the shaft.

A captain, Father Richomme, a big man with the face of a good-natured

gendarme, and with a straight grey moustache, was at that moment going

towards the receiver's office.

"Do they want a hand here for any kind of work?" asked Étienne again.

Richomme was about to say no, but he changed his mind and replied like

the others, as he went away:

"Wait for Monsieur Dansaert, the head captain."

Four lanterns were placed there, and the reflectors which threw all

the light on to the shaft vividly illuminated the iron rail, the

levers of the signals and bars, the joists of the guides along which

slid the two cages. The rest of the vast room, like the nave of a

church, was obscure, and peopled by great floating shadows. Only the

lamp-cabin shone at the far end, while in the receiver's office a small

lamp looked like a fading star. Work was about to be resumed, and on

the iron pavement there was a continual thunder, trams of coal being

wheeled without ceasing, while the landers, with their long, bent

backs, could be distinguished amid the movement of all these black and

noisy things, in perpetual agitation.

For a moment Étienne stood motionless, deafened and blinded. He felt

frozen by the currents of air which entered from every side. Then he

moved on a few paces, attracted by the winding engine, of which he

could now see the glistening steel and copper. It was twenty-five

metres beyond the shaft, in a loftier chamber, and placed so solidly on

its brick foundation that though it worked at full speed, with all its

four hundred horse power, the movement of its enormous crank, emerging

and plunging with oily softness, imparted no quiver to the walls.

The engine-man, standing at his post, listened to the ringing of the

signals, and his eye never moved from the indicator where the shaft

was figured, with its different levels, by a vertical groove traversed

by shot hanging to strings, which represented the cages; and at each

departure, when the machine was put in motion, the drums--two immense

wheels, five metres in radius, by means of which the two steel cables

were rolled and unrolled--turned with such rapidity that they became

like grey powder.

"Look out, there!" cried three landers, who were dragging an immense

ladder.

Étienne just escaped being crushed; his eyes were soon more at home,

and he watched the cables moving in the air, more than thirty metres

of steel ribbon, which flew up into the pit-frame where they passed

over pulleys to descend perpendicularly into the shaft, where they

were attached to the cages. An iron frame, like the high scaffolding

of a belfry, supported the pulleys. It was like the gliding of a bird,

noiseless, without a jar, this rapid flight, the continual come and

go of a thread of enormous weight, capable of lifting twelve thousand

kilograms at the rate of ten metres a second.

"Attention there, for God's sake!" cried again the landers, pushing

the ladder to the other side in order to climb to the left-hand rowel.

Slowly Étienne returned to the receiving-room. This giant flight over

his head took away his breath. Shivering in the currents of air, he

watched the movement of the cages, his ears deafened by the rumblings

of the trams. Near the shaft the signal was working, a heavy-levered

hammer drawn by a cord from below and allowed to strike against a

block. One blow to stop, two to go down, three to go up; it was

unceasing, like blows of a club dominating the tumult, accompanied by

the clear sound of the bell; while the lander, directing the work,

increased the noise still more by shouting orders to the engine-man

through a trumpet. The cages in the middle of the clear space appeared

and disappeared, were filled and emptied, without Étienne being at all

able to understand the complicated proceeding.

He only understood one thing well: the shaft swallowed men by mouthfuls

of twenty or thirty, and with so easy a gulp that it seemed to feel

nothing go down. Since four o'clock the descent of the workmen had

been going on. They came to the shed with naked feet and their lamps

in their hands, waiting in little groups until a sufficient number had

arrived. Without a sound, with the soft bound of a nocturnal beast,

the iron cage arose from the night, wedged itself on the bolts with

its four decks, each containing two trams full of coal. Landers on

different platforms took out the trams and replaced them by others,

either empty or already laden with trimmed wooden props; and it was

into the empty trams that the workmen crowded, five at a time, up to

forty. When they filled all the compartments, an order came from the

trumpet--a hollow indistinct roar--while the signal cord was pulled

four times from below, "ringing meat," to give warning of this burden

of human flesh. Then, after a slight leap, the cage plunged silently,

falling like a stone, only leaving behind it the vibrating flight of a

cable.

"Is it deep?" asked Étienne of a miner, who waited near him with a

sleepy air.

"Five hundred and fifty-four metres," replied the man. "But there are

four levels, the first at three hundred and twenty." Both were silent,

with their eyes on the returning cable. Étienne said again:

"And if it breaks?"

"Ah! if it breaks----"

The miner ended with a gesture. His turn had arrived; the cage had

reappeared with its easy, unfatigued movement. He squatted in it with

some comrades; it plunged down, then flew up again in less then four

minutes to swallow down another load of men. For half an hour the shaft

went on devouring in this fashion, with more or less greedy gulps,

according to the depth of the level to which the men went down, but

without stopping, always hungry, with its giant intestines capable

of digesting a nation. It went on filling and still filling, and the

darkness remained dead. The cage mounted from the void with the same

voracious silence.

Étienne was at last seized again by the same depression which he had

experienced on the pit bank. What was the good of persisting? This

head captain would send him off like the others. A vague fear suddenly

decided him: he went away, only stopping before the building of the

engine room. The wide-open door showed seven boilers with two furnaces.

In the midst of the white steam and the whistling of the escapes a

stoker was occupied in piling up one of the furnaces, the heat of

which could be felt as far as the threshold; and the young man was

approaching, glad of the warmth, when he met a new band of colliers who

had just arrived at the pit. It was the Maheu and Levaque set. When he

saw Catherine at the head, with her gentle boyish air, a superstitious

idea caused him to risk another question.

"I say there, mate! do they want a hand here for any kind of work?"

She looked at him surprised, rather frightened at this sudden voice

coming out of the shadow. But Maheu, behind her, had heard and replied,

talking with Étienne for a moment. No, no one was wanted. This poor

devil of a man who had lost his way here interested him. When he left

him he said to the others:

"Eh! one might easily be like that. Mustn't complain: every one hasn't

the chance to work himself to death."

The band entered and went straight to the shed, a vast hall roughly

boarded and surrounded by cupboards shut by padlocks. In the centre an

iron fireplace, a sort of closed stove without a door, glowed red and

was so stuffed with burning coal that fragments flew out and rolled

on to the trodden soil. The hall was only lighted by this stove,

from which sanguine reflections danced along the greasy woodwork up

to the ceiling, stained with black dust. As the Maheus went into the

heat there was a sound of laughter. Some thirty workmen were standing

upright with their backs to the fire, roasting themselves with an air

of enjoyment. Before going down, they all came here to get a little

warmth in their skins, so that they could face the dampness of the

pit. But this morning there was much amusement: they were joking

Mouquette, a putter girl of eighteen, whose enormous breasts and

flanks were bursting through her old jacket and breeches. She lived

at Réquillart with her father old Mouque, a groom, and Mouquet, her

brother, a lander; but their hours of work were not the same; she went

to the pit by herself, and in the middle of the wheatfields in summer,

or against a wall in winter, she took her pleasure with her lover of

the week. All in the mine had their turn; it was a perpetual round of

comrades without further consequences. One day, when reproached about

a Marchiennes nail-maker, she was furiously angry, exclaiming that she

respected herself far too much, that she would cut her arm off if any

one could boast that he had seen her with any one but a collier.

"It isn't that big Chaval now?" said a miner grinning; "did that

little fellow have you? he must have needed a ladder. I saw you behind

Réquillart, a token that he got up on a milestone."

"Well," replied Mouquette, in a good humour, "what's that to do with

you? You were not asked to push."

And this gross good-natured joke increased the laughter of the men, who

expanded their shoulders, half cooked by the stove, while she herself,

shaken by laughter, was displaying in the midst of them the indecency

of her costume, embarrassingly comical, with her masses of flesh

exaggerated almost to disease.

But the gaiety ceased; Mouquette told Maheu that Fleurance, big

Fleurance, would never come again; she had been found the night before

stiff in her bed; some said it was her heart, others that it was a pint

of gin she had drunk too quickly. And Maheu was in despair; another

piece of ill-luck; one of the best of his putters gone without any

chance of replacing her at once. He was working in a set; there were

four pikemen associated in his cutting, himself, Zacharie, Levaque, and

Chaval. If they had Catherine alone to wheel, the work would suffer.

Suddenly he called out:

"I have it! there was that man looking for work!"

At that moment Dansaert passed before the shed. Maheu told him the

story, and asked for his authority to engage the man; he emphasized the

desire of the Company to substitute men for women, as at Anzin. The

head captain smiled at first; for the scheme of excluding women from

the pit was not usually well received by the miners, who were troubled

about placing their daughters, and not much affected by questions of

morality and health. But after some hesitation he gave his permission,

reserving its ratification for Monsieur Négrel, the engineer.

"All very well!" exclaimed Zacharie; "the man must be away by this

time."

"No," said Catherine. "I saw him stop at the boilers."

"After him, then, lazy," cried Maheu.

The young girl ran forward; while a crowd of miners proceeded to the

shaft, yielding the fire to others.

Jeanlin, without waiting for his father, went also to take his lamp,

together with Bébert, a big, stupid boy, and Lydie, a small child of

ten. Mouquette, who was in front of them, called out in the black

passage they were dirty brats, and threatened to box their ears if they

pinched her.

Étienne was, in fact, in the boiler building, talking with a stoker,

who was charging the furnaces with coal. He felt very cold at the

thought of the night into which he must return. But he was deciding to

set out, when he felt a hand placed on his shoulder.

"Come," said Catherine; "there's something for you."

At first he could not understand. Then he felt a spasm of joy, and

vigorously squeezed the young girl's hands.

"Thanks, mate. Ah! you're a good chap, you are!"

She began to laugh, looking at him in the red light of the furnaces,

which lit them up. It amused her that he should take her for a boy,

still slender, with her knot of hair hidden beneath the cap. He also

was laughing, with satisfaction, and they remained, for a moment, both

laughing in each other's faces with radiant cheeks.

Maheu, squatting down before his box in the shed, was taking off

his sabots and his coarse woollen stockings. When Étienne arrived

everything was settled in three or four words: thirty sous a day,

hard work, but work that he would easily learn. The pikeman advised

him to keep his shoes, and lent him an old cap, a leather hat for the

protection of his skull, a precaution which the father and his children

disdained. The tools were taken out of the chest, where also was found

Fleurance's shovel. Then, when Maheu had shut up their sabots, their

stockings, as well as Étienne's bundle, he suddenly became impatient.

"What is that lazy Chaval up to? Another girl given a tumble on a pile

of stones? We are half an hour late to-day."

Zacharie and Levaque were quietly roasting their shoulders. The former

said at last:

"Is it Chaval you're waiting for? He came before us, and went down at

once."

"What! you knew that, and said nothing? Come, come, look sharp!"

Catherine, who was warming her hands, had to follow the band. Étienne

allowed her to pass, and went behind her. Again he journeyed through

a maze of staircases and obscure corridors in which their naked feet

produced the soft sound of old slippers. But the lamp-cabin was

glittering--a glass house, full of hooks in rows, holding hundreds of

Davy lamps, examined and washed the night before, and lighted like

candles in a mortuary chapel. At the barrier each workman took his own,

stamped with his number; then he examined it and shut it himself, while

the marker, seated at a table, inscribed on the registers the hour of

descent. Maheu had to intervene to obtain a lamp for his new putter,

and there was still another precaution: the workers defiled before an

examiner, who assured himself that all the lamps were properly closed.

"Golly! It's not warm here," murmured Catherine, shivering.

Étienne contented himself with nodding his head. He was in front of

the shaft, in the midst of a vast hall swept by currents of air.

He certainly considered himself brave, but he felt a disagreeable

emotion at his chest amid this thunder of trams, the hollow blows of

the signals, the stifled howling of the trumpet, the continual flight

of those cables, unrolled and rolled at full speed by the drums of

the engine. The cages rose and sank with the gliding movement of a

nocturnal beast, always engulfing men, whom the throat of the hole

seemed to drink. It was his turn now. He felt very cold, and preserved

a nervous silence which made Zacharie and Levaque grin; for both of

them disapproved of the hiring of this unknown man, especially Levaque,

who was offended that he had not been consulted. So Catherine was glad

to hear her father explain things to the young man.

"Look! above the cage there is a parachute with iron grapnels to catch

into the guides in case of breakage. Does it work? Oh, not always. Yes,

the shaft is divided into three compartments, closed by planking from

top to bottom; in the middle the cages, on the left the passage for the

ladders----"

But he interrupted himself to grumble, though taking care not to raise

his voice much.

"What are we stuck here for, blast it? What right have they to freeze

us in this way?"

The captain, Richomme, who was going down himself, with his naked lamp

fixed by a nail into the leather of his cap, heard him.

"Careful! Look out for ears," he murmured paternally, as an old miner

with a affectionate feeling for comrades. "Workmen must do what they

can. Hold on! here we are; get in with your fellows."

The cage, provided with iron bands and a small-meshed lattice work,

was in fact awaiting them on the bars. Maheu, Zacharie, and Catherine

slid into a tram below, and as all five had to enter, Étienne in

his turn went in, but the good places were taken; he had to squeeze

himself near the young girl, whose elbow pressed into his belly. His

lamp embarrassed him; they advised him to fasten it to the button-hole

of his jacket. Not hearing, he awkwardly kept it in his hand. The

embarkation continued, above and below, a confused packing of cattle.

They did not, however, set out. What, then, was happening? It seemed

to him that his impatience lasted for many minutes. At last he felt a

shock, and the light grew dim, everything around him seemed to fly,

while he experienced the dizzy anxiety of a fall contracting his

bowels. This lasted as long as he could see light, through the two

reception stories, in the midst of the whirling by of the scaffolding.

Then, having fallen into the blackness of the pit, he became stunned,

no longer having any clear perception of his sensations.

"Now we are off," said Maheu quietly.

They were all at their ease. He asked himself at times if he was going

up or down. Now and then, when the cage went straight without touching

the guides, there seemed to be no motion, but rough shocks were

afterwards produced, a sort of dancing amid the joists, which made him

fear a catastrophe. For the rest he could not distinguish the walls of

the shaft behind the lattice work, to which he pressed his face. The

lamps feebly lighted the mass of bodies at his feet. Only the captain's

naked light, in the neighbouring tram, shone like a lighthouse.

"This is four metres in diameter," continued Maheu, to instruct him.

"The tubbing wants doing over again, for the water comes in everywhere.

Stop! we are reaching the bottom: do you hear?"

Étienne was, in fact, now asking himself the meaning of this noise of

falling rain. A few large drops had at first sounded on the roof of

the cage, like the beginning of a shower, and now the rain increased,

streaming down, becoming at last a deluge. The roof must be full of

holes, for a thread of water was flowing on to his shoulder and wetting

him to the skin. The cold became icy and they were buried in black

humidity, when they passed through a sudden flash of light, the vision

of a cavern in which men were moving. But already they had fallen back

into darkness.

Maheu said:

"That is the first main level. We are at three hundred and twenty

metres. See the speed."

Raising his lamp he lighted up a joist of the guides which fled by like

a rail beneath a train going at full speed; and beyond, as before,

nothing could be seen. They passed three other levels in flashes of

light. The deafening rain continued to strike through the darkness.

"How deep it is!" murmured Étienne.

This fall seemed to last for hours. He was suffering for the cramped

position he had taken, not daring to move, and especially tortured by

Catherine's elbow. She did not speak a word; he only felt her against

him and it warmed him. When the cage at last stopped at the bottom, at

five hundred and fifty-four metres, he was astonished to learn that

the descent had lasted exactly one minute. But the noise of the bolts

fixing themselves, the sensation of solidity beneath, suddenly cheered

him; and he was joking when he said to Catherine:

"What have you got under your skin to be so warm? I've got your elbow

in my belly, sure enough."

Then she also burst out laughing. Stupid of him, still to take her for

a boy! Were his eyes out?

"It's in your eye that you've got my elbow!" she replied, in the midst

of a storm of laughter which the astonished young man could not account

for.

The cage voided its burden of workers, who crossed the pit-eye hall, a

chamber cut in the rock, vaulted with masonry, and lighted up by three

large lamps. Over the iron flooring the porters were violently rolling

laden trams. A cavernous odour exhaled from the walls, a freshness of

saltpetre in which mingled hot breaths from the neighbouring stable.

The openings of four galleries yawned here.

"This way," said Maheu to Étienne. "You're not there yet. It is still

two kilometres."

The workmen separated, and were lost in groups in the depths of these

black holes. Some fifteen went off into that on the left, and Étienne

walked last, behind Maheu, who was preceded by Catherine, Zacharie,

and Levaque. It was a large gallery for wagons, through a bed of solid

rock, which had only needed walling here and there. In single file they

still went on without a word, by the tiny flame of the lamps. The young

man stumbled at every step, and entangled his feet in the rails. For a

moment a hollow sound disturbed him, the sound of a distant storm, the

violence of which seemed to increase and to come from the bowels of the

earth. Was it the thunder of a landslip bringing on to their heads the

enormous mass which separated them from the light? A gleam pierced the

night, he felt the rock tremble, and when he had placed himself close

to the wall, like his comrades, he saw a large white horse close to his

face, harnessed to a train of wagons. On the first, and holding the

reins, was seated Bébert, while Jeanlin, with his hands leaning on the

edge of the last, was running barefooted behind.

They again began their walk. Farther on they reached crossways, where

two new galleries opened, and the band divided again, the workers

gradually entering all the stalls of the mine.

Now the wagon-gallery was constructed of wood; props of timber

supported the roof, and made for the crumbly rock a screen of

scaffolding, behind which one could see the plates of schist glimmering

with mica, and the coarse masses of dull, rough sandstone. Trains of

tubs, full or empty, continually passed, crossing each other with

their thunder, borne into the shadow by vague beasts trotting by like

phantoms. On the double way of a shunting line a long, black serpent

slept, a train at standstill, with a snorting horse, whose crupper

looked like a block fallen from the roof. Doors for ventilation were

slowly opening and shutting. And as they advanced the gallery became

more narrow and lower, and the roof irregular, forcing them to bend

their backs constantly.

Étienne struck his head hard; without his leather cap he would have

broken his skull. However, he attentively followed the slightest

gestures of Maheu, whose sombre profile was seen against the glimmer of

the lamps. None of the workmen knocked themselves; they evidently knew

each boss, each knot of wood or swelling in the rock. The young man

also suffered from the slippery soil, which became damper and damper.

At times he went through actual puddles, only revealed by the muddy

splash of his feet. But what especially astonished him were the sudden

changes of temperature. At the bottom of the shaft it was very chilly,

and in the wagon-gallery, through which all the air of the mine passed,

an icy breeze was blowing, with the violence of a tempest, between the

narrow walls. Afterwards, as they penetrated more deeply along other

passages which only received a meagre share of air, the wind fell and

the heat increased, a suffocating heat as heavy as lead.

Maheu had not again opened his mouth. He turned down another gallery to

the right, simply saying to Étienne, without looking round:

"The Guillaume seam."

It was the seam which contained their cutting. At the first step,

Étienne hurt his head and elbows. The sloping roof descended so low

that, for twenty or thirty metres at a time, he had to walk bent

double. The water came up to his ankles. After two hundred metres of

this, he saw Levaque, Zacharie, and Catherine disappear, as though they

had flown through a narrow fissure which was open in front of him.

"We must climb," said Maheu. "Fasten your lamp to a button-hole and

hang on to the wood." He himself disappeared, and Étienne had to follow

him. This chimney-passage left in the seam was reserved for miners, and

led to all the secondary passages. It was about the thickness of the

coal-bed, hardly sixty centimetres. Fortunately the young man was thin,

for, as he was still awkward, he hoisted himself up with a useless

expense of muscle, flattening his shoulders and hips, advancing by the

strength of his wrists, clinging to the planks. Fifteen metres higher

they came on the first secondary passage, but they had to continue, as

the cutting of Maheu and his mates was in the sixth passage, in hell,

as they said; every fifteen metres the passages were placed over each

other in never-ending succession through this cleft, which scraped back

and chest. Étienne groaned as if the weight of the rocks had pounded

his limbs; with torn hands and bruised legs, he also suffered from

lack of air, so that he seemed to feel the blood bursting through his

skin. He vaguely saw in one passage two squatting beasts, a big one

and a little one, pushing trams: they were Lydie and Mouquette already

at work. And he had still to climb the height of two cuttings! He was

blinded by sweat, and he despaired of catching up the others, whose

agile limbs he heard brushing against the rock with a long gliding

movement.

"Cheer up! here we are!" said Catherine's voice.

He had, in fact, arrived, and another voice cried from the bottom of

the cutting:

"Well, is this the way to treat people? I have two kilometres to walk

from Montsou and I am here first." It was Chaval, a tall, lean, bony

fellow of twenty-five, with strongly marked features, who was in a

bad humour at having to wait. When he saw Étienne he asked, with

contemptuous surprise:

"What's that?"

And when Maheu had told him the story he added between his teeth:

"These men are eating the bread of girls."

The two men exchanged a look, lighted up by one of those instinctive

hatreds which suddenly flame up. Étienne had felt the insult without

yet understanding it. There was silence, and they got to work. At last

all the seams were gradually filled, and the cuttings were in movement

at every level and at the end of every passage. The devouring shaft

had swallowed its daily ration of men: nearly seven hundred hands, who

were now at work in this giant ant-hill, everywhere making holes in the

earth, drilling it like an old worm-eaten piece of wood. And in the

middle of the heavy silence and crushing weight of the strata one could

hear, by placing one's ear to the rock, the movement of these human

insects at work, from the flight of the cable which moved the cage up

and down, to the biting of the tools cutting out the coal at the end

of the stalls. Étienne, on turning round, found himself again pressed

close to Catherine. But this time he caught a glimpse of the developing

curves of her breast: he suddenly understood the warmth which had

penetrated him.

"You are a girl, then!" he exclaimed, stupefied.

She replied in her cheerful way, without blushing:

"Of course. You've taken your time to find it out!"