Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/286

GERMINAL they began working here, five days ago, she had thought of the stories told her in childhood, of those putter-girls of the days of old who were burning beneath Tartaret, as a punishment for things which no one dared to repeat. No doubt she was too big now to believe such silly stories; but still, what should she do if she were suddenly to see coming out of the wall a girl as red as a stove, with eyes like live coals? The idea made her perspire still more.

At the relay, eighty mètres from the cutting, another putter took the tram and pushed it eighty mètres farther to the up-brow, so that the receiver could forward it with the others which came down from the upper galleries.

"Gracious! you're making yourself comfortable!" said this woman, a lean widow of thirty, when she saw Catherine in her chemise. "I can't do it, the trammers at the brow bother me with their dirty tricks."

"Ah, well!" replied the young girl. "I don't care about the men! I feel too bad."

She went off again, pushing an empty tram. The worst was that in this bottom passage another cause joined to the neighborhood of Tartaret to make the heat unbearable. They were by the side of old workings, a very deep abandoned gallery of Gaston-Marie, where, ten years earlier, an explosion of firedamp had set alight the seam; and it was still burning behind the clay wall which had been built there, and was kept constantly repaired, in order to limit the disaster. Deprived of air, the fire ought to have become extinct, but no doubt unknown currents kept it alive; it had gone on for ten years, and heated the clay wall like the bricks of an oven, so that those who passed felt half-roasted. It was along this wall, for a length of more than a hundred mètres, that the haulage was carried on, in a temperature of sixty degrees.

After two journeys, Catherine again felt stifled. Fortunately, the passage was large and convenient in this Désirée seam, one of the thickest in the district. The bed was one mètre ninety in height, and the men could work standing. But they would rather have worked with twisted necks and a little fresh air.

"Hallo, there! are you asleep?" said Chaval again, roughly, as soon as he no longer heard Catherine moving. "How the [274]