GERMINAL
Behind a shed Étienne saw some porters filling a wagon with coal.
"Will you just clear out of the bloody place!" he shouted. "Not a bit of coal goes out!"
At his orders some hundred strikers ran up, and the porters only had time to escape. Men unharnessed the horses which were frightened and some set off, struck in the haunches, while others, overturning the wagon, broke the shafts.
Levaque, with violent blows of his axe, had thrown himself on the platforms to break down the foot-bridges. They resisted, and it occurred to him to tear up the rails, destroying the line from one end of the square to the other. Soon the whole band set to this task. Maheu made the metal chairs leap up, armed with his iron bar which he used as a lever. During this time Mother Brûlé led away the women and invaded the lamp cabin, where their sticks covered the soil with a carnage of lamps. Maheude, carried out of herself, was laying about her as vigorously as the Levaque women. All were soaked in oil, and Mouquette dried her hands on her skirt, laughing to find herself so dirty. Jeanlin, for a joke, had emptied a lamp down her neck. But all this revenge produced nothing to eat. Stomachs were crying out louder than ever. And the great lamentation dominated still:
"Bread! bread! bread!"
A former captain at the Victoire kept a stall near by. No doubt he had fled in fear, for his shed was abandoned. When the woman came back, and the men had finished destroying the railway, they besieged the stall, the shutters of which yielded at once. They found no bread there; there were only two pieces of raw flesh and a sack of potatoes. But in the pillage they discovered some fifty bottles of gin, which disappeared like a drop of water drunk up by the sand.
Étienne, having emptied his tin, was able to refill it. Little by little a terrible drunkenness, the drunkenness of the starved, was inflaming his eyes and showing his teeth like a wolf's teeth between his pallid lips. Suddenly he perceived that Chaval had gone off in the midst of the tumult. He swore, and men ran to seize the fugitive, who was hiding with Catherine behind the timber supply.
"Ah! you dirty swine; you are afraid of getting into trouble!"
[300]
