Page:Germinal - Zola - 1925.djvu/48

GERMINAL, and he could not have told her age; he thought she must be twelve, she seemed to him so slight. However, he felt she must be older, with her boyish freedom, a simple audacity which confused him a little; she did not please him: he thought her too roguish with her pale Pierrot head, framed at the temples by the cap. But what astonished him was the strength of this child, a nervous strength which was blended with a good deal of skill. She filled her tram faster than he could, with quick small regular strokes of the shovel; she afterwards pushed it to the inclined way with a single slow push, without a hitch, easily passing under the low rocks. He tore himself to pieces, got off the rails, and was reduced to despair.

It was certainly not a convenient road. It was sixty métres from the cutting to the upbrow, and the passage, which the miners in the earth cutting had not yet enlarged, was a mere tube with a very irregular roof swollen by innumerable bosses; at certain spots the laden tram could only just pass; the putter had to flatten himself, to push on his knees, in order not to break his head, and besides this the wood was already bending and yielding. One could see it broken in the middle in long pale rents like an over-weak crutch. One had to be careful not to graze one’s self in these fractures; and beneath the slow crushing, which caused the splitting of billets of oak as large as the thigh, one had to glide almost on one’s belly with a secret fear of suddenly hearing one’s back break.

“Again!” said Catherine, laughing.

Étienne’s tram had gone off the rails at the most difficult spot. He could not roll straight on these rails which sank in the damp earth, and he swore, became angry, and fought furiously with the wheels, which he could not get back into place in spite of exaggerated efforts.

“Wait a bit,” said the young girl. “If you get angry it will never go.” Skillfully she had glided down, had buried her buttocks backwards beneath the tram, and by putting the weight on her loins she raised it and replaced it. The weight was seven hundred kilogrammes. Surprised and ashamed, he stammered excuses.

She was obliged to show him how to separate his legs to support his feet against the planking on both sides of the [36]