GERMINAL
it was unceasing, like blows of a club dominating the tumult, accompanied by the clear sound of the bell; while the landers directing the work, increased the noise still more by shouting orders to the engine-man through a trumpet. The cages in the middle of the clear space appeared and disappeared, were filled and emptied, without Étienne being at all able to under'stand the complicated proceeding.
He only understood one thing well: the shaft swallowed men by mouthfuls of twenty or thirty, and with so easy a gulp that it seemed to feel nothing go down. Since four o'clock the descent of the workmen had been going on. They came to the shed with naked feet and their lamps in their hands, waiting in little groups until a sufficient number had arrived. Without a sound, with the soft bound of a nocturnal beast, the iron cage arose from the night, wedged itself on the bolts with its four decks, each containing two trams full of coal. Landers on different platforms took out the trams and replaced them by others, either empty or already laden; and it was into the empty trams that the workmen crowded, five at a time, up to forty. When they filled all the compartments, an order came from the trumpet—a hollow indistinct roar—while the signal cord was pulled four times from below, "ringing meat," to give warning of this burden of human flesh. Then, after a slight leap, the cage plunged silently, falling like a stone, only leaving behind it the vibrating flight of a cable.
"Is it deep?" asked Étienne of a miner, who waited near him with a sleepy air.
"Five hundred and fifty-four mètres," replied the man. "But there are four levels, the first at three hundred and twenty." Both were silent, with their eyes on the returning cable. Étienne said again:
"And if it breaks?"
"Ah! if it breaks—"
The miner ended with a gesture. His turn had arrived; the cage had re-appeared with its easy, unfatigued movement. He squatted in it with some comrades; it plunged down, then flew up again in less than four minutes to swallow down another load of men. For half-an-hour the shaft went on devouring in this fashion, with more or less greedy gulps,
[22]
