Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/42

GERMINAL Now the waggon-gallery was constructed of wood; props of timber supported the roof, and made for the crumbly rock a shirt 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, his crupper looking 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 roughly struck his head; 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 marshes, 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 fresh, and in the waggon-gallery, through which passed all the air of the mine, 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 small disputed 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. After the first steps, Étienne hurt his head and elbows. The sloping roof descended so low that, for twenty or thirty mètres at a time, he had to walk bent double. The water came up to his ankles. After two hundred mètres of this, he saw Levaque, Zacharie, and Catherine disappear, as though they had [30]