CHAPTER V
ALL the entrances to the Voreux had been closed, and the sixty soldiers, with grounded arms, were barring the only door left free, that leading to the receiving-room by a narrow staircase into which opened the captains' room and the shed. The men had been drawn up in two lines against the brick wall, so that they could not be attacked from behind.
At first the band of miners from the settlement kept at a distance. They were some thirty at most, and talked together in a violent and confused way.
Maheude, who had arrived first with dishevelled hair beneath a handkerchief knotted on in haste, and having Estelle asleep in her arms, repeated in feverish tones:
"Don't let anyone in or anyone out! Shut them all in there!"
Maheu approved, and just then Father Mouque arrived from Réquillart. They wanted to prevent him from passing. But he protested; he said that his horses ate their hay all the same, and cared precious little about a revolution. Besides, there was a horse dead, and they were waiting for him to draw it up. Étienne freed the old groom, and the soldiers allowed him to go to the shaft. A quarter of an hour later, as the band of strikers, which had gradually enlarged, was becoming threatening, a large door opened on the ground floor and some men appeared drawing out the dead beast, a miserable mass of flesh still fastened in the rope-net; they left it in the midst of the puddles of melting snow. The surprise was so great that no one prevented the men from returning and barricading the door afresh. They all recognised the horse, with his head bent back and stiff against the plank. Whispers ran around.
"It's Trompette, isn't it? it's Trompette."
It was, in fact, Trompette. Ever since his descent he had never become acclimatised. He remained melancholy, with no taste for his task, as though tortured by regret for the light. In vain Bateille, the dean of the mine, would rub him with his ribs
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