Part 38

--The names! the names! cried the women, their voices choked with tears.

Négrel appeared for an instant, and threw out these words:

--As soon as we know the names, we will make them known. But nothing is lost, everyone will be saved... I am going down.

Then, mute with anguish, the crowd waited. Indeed, with a quiet bravery, the engineer was preparing to descend. He had ordered the cage to be unhooked, giving instructions to replace it, at the end of the cable, with a tub; and, as he suspected that the water would extinguish his lamp, he commanded another to be fastened beneath the tub, which would protect it.

Some foremen, trembling, their faces white and distorted, helped with these preparations.

--You are coming down with me, Dansaert, said Négrel in a curt voice.

Then, when he saw them all without courage, when he saw the head foreman stagger, drunk with terror, he pushed him aside with a gesture of contempt.

--No, you would be in my way... I would rather be alone.

Already, he was in the narrow bucket, which swayed at the end of the cable; and, holding his lamp in one hand, gripping the signal rope with the other, he himself cried to the engine-man:

--Gently!

The engine set the reels in motion, Négrel disappeared into the gulf, from which the howling of the wretches still rose.

Above, nothing had moved. He noted the good condition of the upper tubbing. Swinging in the middle of the shaft, he turned, he lit up the walls: the leaks, between the joints, were so slight that his lamp did not suffer from them. But, at three hundred metres, when he reached the lower tubbing, it went out as he had foreseen, a jet of water had filled the tub. Thenceforth, he had for light only the hanging lamp, which preceded him into the darkness. And, despite his daring, a shudder paled him, before the horror of the disaster. A few pieces of timber alone remained, the others had collapsed with their frames; behind, enormous cavities opened, the yellow sands, fine as flour, poured in considerable masses; while the waters of the Torrent, that subterranean sea of unknown storms and shipwrecks, spread in a sluice-like outpouring. He went down further, lost in the centre of these voids which ever widened, beaten and whirling under the waterspout of the springs, so poorly lit by the red star of the lamp, speeding below, that he thought he distinguished streets, crossroads of a destroyed city, far away, in the play of the great moving shadows. No human work was any longer possible. He kept but one hope, that of attempting the rescue of the men in peril. As he sank deeper, he heard the howling grow; and he had to stop, an insurmountable obstacle barred the shaft, a heap of timber, the broken guides, the split partitions of the shafts, tangling with the torn pump-brackets. As he looked long, his heart tight, the howling ceased all at once. No doubt, before the rapid rise, the wretches had just fled into the galleries, if the flood had not already filled their mouths.

Négrel had to resign himself to pulling the signal rope, to be drawn up. Then, he had himself stopped again. A stupor remained in him, that of this so sudden accident, whose cause he did not understand. He wished to ascertain, he examined the few pieces of tubbing that held firm. At a distance, tears, gashes in the wood, had surprised him. His lamp was dying, drowned in moisture, and he touched with his fingers, he very distinctly recognised saw-cuts, brace-and-bit borings, a whole abominable work of destruction. Evidently, this catastrophe had been willed. He remained gaping, the pieces cracked, sank with their frames, in a last sliding which nearly carried him away himself. His bravery had gone, the thought of the man who had done that raised his hair, froze him with the religious fear of evil, as if, mingled with the shadows, the man were still there, enormous, for his measureless crime. He cried, he shook the signal with a furious hand; and it was high time moreover, for he perceived, a hundred metres higher, that the upper tubbing was beginning in its turn to move: the joints opened, lost their packing of oakum, let loose streams. It was now but a question of hours, the shaft would finish untubbing itself, and would collapse.

In daylight, M. Hennebeau anxiously awaited Négrel.

--Well! what? he asked.

But the engineer, choking, spoke not. He was fainting.

--It is not possible, never has such a thing been seen... Did you examine?

Yes, he answered with his head, with distrustful looks. He refused to explain himself in the presence of the few foremen who listened, he took his uncle aside ten metres, did not judge himself far enough, retreated still further; then, very low, at his ear, he at last told him of the outrage, the bored and sawn planks, the pit bleeding at the throat and rattling. Grown pale, the manager also lowered his voice, in the instinctive need which silences the monstrosity of great debauches and great crimes. It was useless to seem to tremble before the ten thousand workers of Montsou: later, one would see. And both continued to whisper, stricken that a man had found the courage to descend, to hang himself in the midst of the void, to risk his life twenty times, for that frightful task. They did not even understand this mad bravery in destruction, they refused to believe despite the evidence, as one doubts those tales of famous escapes, of prisoners flown through windows, thirty metres from the ground.

When M. Hennebeau came back to the foremen, a nervous tic pulled at his face. He made a gesture of despair, he gave the order to evacuate the pit at once. It was a lugubrious exit of a burial, a mute abandonment, with backward glances at those great brick bodies, empty and still standing, which nothing henceforth could save.

And, as the manager and the engineer descended last from the pit-bottom, the crowd welcomed them with its clamour, obstinately repeated.

--The names! the names! tell the names!

Now, the Maheude was there, among the women. She remembered the noise of the night, her daughter and the lodger must have left together, they were surely at the bottom; and, after crying that it served them right, that they deserved to stay there, the heartless ones, the cowards, she had run up, she stood in the front rank, shivering with anguish. Besides, she no longer dared doubt, the discussion rising around her about the names informed her. Yes, yes, Catherine was there, Étienne too, a comrade had seen them. But, as to the others, agreement was still not reached. No, not that one, that one on the contrary, perhaps Chaval, with whom however a boy swore he had come up. Levaque and Pierronne, although they had no one in peril, persisted, lamented as loudly as the others. Out among the first, Zacharie, despite his air of mocking everything, had embraced his wife and mother in tears; and, remaining near the latter, he shivered with her, showing for his sister an unexpected outpouring of tenderness, refusing to believe her down there, until the chiefs had officially established it.

--The names! the names! for pity's sake the names!

Négrel, unnerved, said very loud to the overseers:

--But do make them be quiet! It is enough to die of grief. We do not know the names, the names.

Two hours had already passed. In the first bewilderment, no one had thought of the other shaft, the old Réquillart shaft. M. Hennebeau announced that they were going to attempt the rescue on that side, when a rumour ran: five workers just then had escaped the flooding, by climbing up the rotten ladders of the disused old shaft; and they named old Mouque, which caused surprise, no one believed him to be at the bottom. But the tale of the five escaped redoubled the tears: fifteen comrades had not been able to follow them, lost, walled in by falls, and it was no longer possible to succour them, for there was already ten metres of rise in Réquillart. All the names were known, the air filled with a moan of slaughtered people.

--Do make them be quiet! repeated Négrel furiously. And let them fall back! Yes, yes, a hundred metres! There is danger, push them back, push them back.

They had to fight against these poor people. They imagined other misfortunes, they were being driven away to hide dead from them; and the foremen had to explain that the shaft was going to eat the pit. This idea rendered them mute with astonishment, they ended by letting themselves be pushed back step by step; but they had to double the guards who contained them; for, in spite of themselves, as if drawn, they always came back. A thousand persons jostled on the road, they came running from all the corons, from Montsou itself. And the man, up there, on the spoil-heap, the fair man, with the girl's face, smoked cigarettes to be patient, without taking his clear eyes from the pit.

Then, the waiting began. It was noon, no one had eaten, and no one moved away. In the misty sky, of a dirty grey, rust-coloured clouds passed slowly. A big dog, behind Rasseneur's hedge, barked violently, without cease, irritated by the living breath of the crowd. And this crowd, little by little, had spread into the neighbouring lands, had made the circle around the pit, at a hundred metres. In the centre of the great void, the Voreux reared itself. Not a soul, not a sound, a desert; the windows and doors, left open, showed the inner abandonment; a red cat, forgotten, scenting the threat of this solitude, jumped from a stair and disappeared. No doubt the fires of the boilers were hardly going out, for the high brick chimney let loose light smokes, under the dark clouds; while the vane of the headframe creaked in the wind, with a shrill little cry, the only melancholy voice of these vast buildings which were going to die.

At two o'clock, nothing had moved. M. Hennebeau, Négrel, other engineers arrived, formed a group of frock-coats and black hats, in advance of the world; and they too did not move away, their legs broken with fatigue, feverish, sick at impotently assisting at such a disaster, only whispering rare words, as at the bedside of a dying man. The upper tubbing must finish collapsing, one heard sudden resoundings, jerky noises of deep fall, to which succeeded great silences. It was the wound which ever widened: the fall, begun from below, rose, drew near the surface. A nervous impatience had taken Négrel, he wanted to see, and he was already advancing, alone in that frightful void, when they threw themselves on his shoulders. What was the use? he could prevent nothing. However, a miner, an old man, deceiving the watch, galloped to the cabin; but he reappeared tranquilly, he had gone to fetch his clogs.

Three o'clock struck. Nothing yet. A shower had drenched the crowd, without it receding a step. Rasseneur's dog had begun to bark again. And it was at three-twenty only, that a first shock shook the earth. The Voreux trembled at it, solid, still standing. But a second followed at once, and a long cry came from the open mouths: the tarred shed of the screening, after having staggered twice, had just fallen with a terrible crack. Under the enormous pressure, the timbers broke and rubbed so hard, that showers of sparks sprang from them. From that moment, the earth never ceased to tremble, the shocks succeeded one another, underground sinkings, rumblings of a volcano in eruption. Far off, the dog no longer barked, it uttered plaintive howlings, as if it announced the oscillations it felt coming; and the women, the children, all that people who looked, could not hold back a clamour of distress, at each of those bounds which lifted them. In less than ten minutes, the slated roof of the headframe collapsed, the pit-bottom and the engine-room split, broke with a considerable breach. Then, the noises hushed, the falling in stopped, there was again a great silence.

For an hour, the Voreux remained thus, breached, as if bombarded by an army of barbarians. They no longer cried, the widened circle of spectators looked. Under the heap of beams of the screening, one distinguished the smashed tipplers, the burst and twisted hoppers. But it was especially at the pit-bottom that the debris accumulated, in the midst of the rain of bricks, among whole wall-sections fallen to rubble. The iron frame which carried the pulleys had bent, sunk half into the pit; a cage had remained hanging, a piece of torn cable floated; then, there was a mash of tubs, of cast-iron plates, of ladders. By chance, the lamp-room, left intact, showed to the left the clear rows of its little lamps. And, at the bottom of its breached room, one perceived the engine, seated squarely on its masonry mass: the brasses shone, the big steel limbs had an air of indestructible muscles, the enormous connecting-rod, folded in the air, resembled the powerful knee of a giant, lying and tranquil in his strength.

M. Hennebeau, at the end of this hour of respite, felt hope reborn. The movement of the grounds must be ended, they would have the chance to save the engine and the rest of the buildings. But he still forbade approach, he wanted to wait another half-hour. The waiting became insupportable, hope redoubled the anguish, all hearts beat. A dark cloud, grown at the horizon, hastened the twilight, a sinister falling of day upon this wreck of the earth's storms. Since seven o'clock, they were there, without stirring, without eating.

And, suddenly, as the engineers advanced with prudence, a supreme convulsion of the soil put them to flight. Underground detonations burst, a whole monstrous artillery cannonading the gulf. At the surface, the last constructions toppled, crushed. First, a sort of whirlwind carried away the debris of the screening and the pit-bottom. The boiler building then burst, disappeared. Then, it was the square turret where the draining-pump rattled, which fell on its face, like a man mown by a cannonball. And then one saw a frightful thing, one saw the engine, dislocated on its mass, the limbs torn apart, struggle against death: it moved, it extended its connecting-rod, its giant's knee, as to rise; but it was expiring, crushed, engulfed. Alone, the high chimney of thirty metres remained standing, shaken, like a mast in the hurricane. One thought it would crumble and fly in powder, when, all at once, it sank in a block, drunk by the earth, melted thus like a colossal candle; and nothing passed, not even the point of the lightning-rod. It was finished, the wicked beast, crouched in that hollow, gorged with human flesh, no longer breathed its big long breath. Entire, the Voreux had just sunk to the abyss.

Howling, the crowd fled. Women ran hiding their eyes. Terror rolled men like a heap of dry leaves. They did not want to cry, and they cried, the throat swollen, the arms in the air, before the immense hole which had dug itself. This crater of an extinct volcano, fifteen metres deep, extended from the road to the canal, over a width of forty metres at least. All the mine-yard had followed the buildings there, the gigantic trestles, the footbridges with their rails, a complete train of tubs, three wagons; without counting the provision of timber, a wood of cut poles, swallowed like straws. At the bottom, one distinguished no longer but a mash of beams, of bricks, of iron, of plaster, of frightful pounded remains, entangled, soiled, in that raging of the catastrophe. And the hole rounded itself, cracks started from the edges, gained afar, across the fields. A fissure mounted to Rasseneur's shop, whose front had cracked. Was the coron itself going to go there? how far must one flee, to be safe, in that abominable end of day, under that leaden cloud, which too seemed to want to crush the world?

But Négrel uttered a cry of pain. M. Hennebeau, who had recoiled, wept. The disaster was not complete, a bank broke, and the canal poured at once, in a bubbling sheet, into one of the cracks. It disappeared there, it fell like a cataract into a deep valley. The mine drank this river, the flooding now submerged the galleries for years. Soon, the crater filled, a lake of muddy water occupied the place where lately was the Voreux, like those lakes under which sleep accursed cities. A terrified silence had made itself, one heard no longer but the fall of this water, roaring in the entrails of the earth.

Then, on the shaken spoil-heap, Souvarine rose. He had recognised the Maheude and Zacharie, sobbing before this collapsing, whose weight pressed so heavy on the heads of the wretches who agonised at the bottom. And he threw his last cigarette, he went away without a backward glance, into the night become black. Far off, his shadow diminished, melted with the shadow. It was yonder he went, to the unknown. He went, with his tranquil air, to extermination, everywhere there would be dynamite, to blow up cities and men. It will be he, no doubt, when the dying bourgeoisie hears, beneath it, at each of its steps, the pavement of the streets burst.

IV

On the very night which had followed the collapse of the Voreux, M. Hennebeau had left for Paris, wishing in person to inform the managers, before the newspapers could even give the news. And, when he returned, the next day, he was found very calm, with his air of a correct manager. He had evidently discharged his responsibility, his favour did not seem to decrease, on the contrary the decree which named him officer of the Legion of Honour was signed twenty-four hours after.

But, if the manager remained safe, the Company staggered under the terrible blow. It was not the few millions lost, it was the wound in the flank, the dull and incessant fright of the morrow, face to face with the throat-cutting of one of its shafts. It was so stricken, that once again it felt the need for silence. What was the use of stirring this abomination? Why, if the bandit were discovered, make a martyr, whose frightful heroism would unbalance other heads, engender a whole lineage of incendiaries and assassins? Besides, it suspected not the true culprit, it ended by believing in an army of accomplices, unable to admit that a single man had found the audacity and the strength for such a task; and there, exactly, was the thought which obsessed it, this thought of a menace henceforth growing around its pits. The manager had received the order to organise a vast system of espionage, then to dismiss one by one, without noise, the dangerous men, suspected of having dipped in the crime. They contented themselves with this purification, of a high political prudence.

There was but one immediate dismissal, that of Dansaert, the head foreman. Since the scandal at Pierronne's, he had become impossible. And they pretended his attitude in the danger, that cowardice of the captain abandoning his men. On the other hand, it was a discreet advance to the miners, who execrated him.

Meanwhile, among the public, rumours had transpired, and the Direction had to send a corrective note to a newspaper, to deny a version in which was spoken of a barrel of powder, lit by the strikers. Already, after a rapid inquiry, the report of the government engineer concluded to a natural rupture of the tubbing, which the settling of the grounds would have occasioned; and the Company had preferred to be silent and accept the blame of a lack of surveillance. In the press, at Paris, from the third day, the catastrophe had gone to swell the miscellaneous facts: they spoke no longer but of the workers agonising at the bottom of the mine, they read avidly the dispatches published each morning. At Montsou itself, the bourgeois paled and lost speech at the mere name of the Voreux, a legend formed, that the boldest trembled to tell one another at the ear. All the country showed also a great pity for the victims, walks organised themselves to the destroyed pit, they ran there in family to give themselves the horror of the ruins, weighing so heavy on the head of the buried wretches.

Deneulin, named divisional engineer, had just fallen amid the disaster, for his entry into function; and his first care was to drive the canal back into its bed, for this torrent of water aggravated the damage each hour. Great works were necessary, he at once put a hundred workers to the construction of a dyke. Twice, the impetuosity of the flood carried away the first barriers. Now, they installed pumps, it was a fierce struggle, a violent retaking, step by step, of these disappeared grounds.

But the rescue of the engulfed miners passionate yet more. Négrel remained charged to attempt a supreme effort, and arms did not fail him, all the colliers ran to offer themselves, in an outburst of fraternity. They forgot the strike, they did not concern themselves with the pay; one could give them nothing, they asked only to risk their skins, from the moment there were comrades in danger of death. All were there, with their tools, quivering, waiting to know at what place it was necessary to tap. Many, sick with fright after the accident, agitated with nervous tremblings, soaked in cold sweats, in the obsession of continual nightmares, rose all the same, showed themselves the most enraged to want to fight against the earth, as if they had a revenge to take. Unfortunately, the embarrassment began before this question of a useful task: what to do? how to descend? by what side attack the rocks?

Négrel's opinion was that not one of the unhappy survived, the fifteen had surely perished, drowned or asphyxiated; only, in these mine catastrophes, the rule is to always suppose alive the men walled at the bottom; and he reasoned in that sense. The first problem he posed to himself was to deduce where they had been able to take refuge. The foremen, the old miners consulted by him, agreed on this point: before the rise, the comrades had certainly mounted, from gallery to gallery, up to the highest workings, so that they found themselves no doubt cornered at the end of some upper way. This, moreover, agreed with the information of old Mouque, whose embroiled tale gave even to believe that the affright of the flight had separated the band into small groups, sowing the fugitives on the way, at all the levels. But the foremen's advices then divided, as soon as one approached the discussion of the possible attempts. As the ways nearest the soil were at a hundred and fifty metres, one could not think of sinking a shaft. There remained Réquillart, the unique access, the only point by which one drew near. The worst was that the old pit, flooded also, no longer communicated with the Voreux, and had free, above the level of the waters, but sections of gallery depending on the first level. The draining was going to demand years, the best decision was therefore to visit these galleries, to see if they did not neighbour the submerged ways, at the end of which one suspected the presence of the miners in distress. Before arriving there logically, one had much discussed, to set aside a crowd of impracticable projects.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”