Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/251

GERMINAL "Damned luck!" said Jeanlin. "This will never finish. Go on, Bébert! Pull on to the tail!"

But two men once more appeared, and the child again stifled an oath when he heard the voice of his brother Zacharie narrating to Mouquet how he had discovered a two-franc piece sewn into one of his wife's petticoats. They both grinned with satisfaction striking each other on the shoulder. MouqeutMouquet [sic] proposed a game of crosse for the next day; they would leave the Avantage at two o'clock, and go to the Montoire side, near Marchiennes. Zacharie agreed. What was the good of bothering over the strike? as well amuse oneself, since there's nothing to do. And they turned the corner of the road, when Étienne, who was coming along the canal, stopped them and began to talk.

"Are they going to bed here?" said Jeanlin, in exasperation. "Nearly night; the old woman will be taking in her sacks."

Another miner came down towards Réquillart. Étienne went off with him, and as they passed the paling the child heard them speak of the forest; they had been obliged to put off the rendezvous to the following day, for fear of not being able to announce it in one day to all the settlements.

"I say, there," he whispered to his two mates, "the big affair is for to-morrow. We'll go, eh? We can get off in the afternoon."

And the road being at last free, he sent off Bébert.

"Courage! hang on to its tail. And look out! the old woman's got her broom."

Fortunately the night had grown dark. Bébert, with a leap, hung on to the cod so that the string broke. He ran away, waving it like a kite, followed by the two others, all three galloping. The woman came out of her shop in astonishment, without understanding or being able to distinguish this band now lost in the darkness.

These scoundrels had become the terror of the country. They gradually spread themselves over it like a horde of savages. At first they had been satisfied with the yard at the Voreux, tumbling into the stock of coal, from which they would emerge looking like negroes, playing at hide-and-seek amid the supply of wood, in which they lost themselves as in the depths of a virgin forest. Then they had taken the pit-bank by assault; they would seat themselves on it and slide down the bare por- [239]