Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/292

GERMINAL The idea that he would meet the Montsou men up above, should he get out, paralysed his legs. It had come, then, that band which he thought had got into the hands of the police. For a moment he thought of retracing his path and ascending through Gaston-Marie, but that was no longer possible. He swore, hesitating, hiding his fear, repeating that it was stupid to run like that. They would not, perhaps, leave them at the bottom.

The captain's voice echoed anew, now approaching them.

"Let everyone go up! To the ladders! to the ladders!"

And Chaval was carried away with his mates. He pushed Catherine and accused her of not running fast enough. Did she want, then, to remain in the pit to die of hunger? For those Montsou brigands were capable of breaking the ladders without waiting for people to come up. This abominable suggestion finished driving them wild. Along the galleries there was only a furious rush, helter-skelter; a race of madmen, each striving to arrive first and mount before the others. Some men shouted that the ladders were broken and that no one could come out. And then in frightened groups they began to reach the pit-eye, where they were all engulfed. They threw themselves toward the shaft, they crushed through the narrow door to the ladder passage; while an old groom who had prudently led back the horses to the stable, looked at them with an air of contemptuous indifference, accustomed to spend nights in the pit and certain that he could always be drawn out of it.

"By God! will you climb up in front of me?" said Chaval to Catherine. "At least I can hold you if you fall."

Out of breath, and suffocated by this race of three kilomètres which had once more bathed her in sweat, she gave herself up, without understanding, to the eddies of the crowd. Then he pulled her by the arm, almost breaking it; and she cried with pain, her tears bursting out. Already he was forgetting his oath, never would she be happy.

"Go on, then!" he roared.

But he frightened her too much. If she went first he would bully her the whole time. So she resisted, while the wild flood of their comrades pushed them to one side. The water that filtered from the shaft was falling in great drops, and the floor of the pit-eye, shaken by this tramping, was trembling over the sump, [280]