Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/182

GERMINAL on, soaked in sweat, their muscles tense to breaking. They came upon a foot, and then began to remove the earth with their hands, freeing the limbs one by one. The head was not hurt. They turned their lamps on it, and Chicot's name went round. He was quite warm, with his spinal column broken by a rock.

"Wrap him up in a covering, and put him in a tram," ordered the Captain. "Now for the lad; look sharp."

Maheu gave the first blow, and an opening was made, communicating with the men who were clearing away the soil from the other side. They shouted out that they had just found Jeanlin, unconscious, with both legs broken, still breathing. It was the father who took up the little one in his arms, with clenched jaws constantly uttering, "My God!" to express his grief, while Catherine and the other women again began to shriek.

A procession was quickly formed. Bébert had taken away Bataille, who was harnessed to the trams. In the first lay Chicot's corpse, supported by Étienne; in the second, Maheu was seated with Jeanlin, still unconscious, on his knees, covered by a fragment of wool torn from the ventilation-door. They started at a walking-pace. On each tram was a lamp like a red star. Then behind followed the row of miners, some fifty shadows in single file. Now that they were overcome by fatigue, they trailed their feet, slipping in the mud with the mournful melancholy of a flock stricken by an epidemic. It took them nearly half-an-hour to reach the pit-eye. This procession beneath the earth, in the midst of deep darkness, seemed never to end through galleries which bifurcated and turned and unrolled.

At the pit-eye Richomme, who had gone on before, had ordered an empty cage to be reserved. Pierron immediately loaded the two trams. In the first Maheu remained with his wounded little one on his knees, while in the other Étienne kept Chicot's corpse between his arms to hold it in. When the men had piled themselves up in the other decks the cage rose. It took two minutes. The rain from the tubbing fell very cold and the men looked up towards the air impatient to see daylight.

Fortunately a trammer sent to Dr. Vanderhagen's had found him and brought him back. Jeanlin and the dead man were [170]