GERMINAL
fixing themselves, the sensation of solidity beneath, suddenly cheered him; and he was joking when he said to Catherine:
"What have you got under your skin to be so warm? I've got your elbow in my belly, sure enough."
Then she also burst out laughing. Stupid of him, still to take her for a boy! Were his eyes stopped?
"It's in your eye that you've got my elbow!" she replied, in the midst of a storm of laughter which the astonished young man could not explain.
The cage voided its burden of workers, who crossed the pit-eye hall, a chamber cut in the rock, vaulted with masonry, and lighted up by three large lamps. Over the iron flooring the porters were violently rolling laden trams. A cavernous odour exhaled from the walls, a freshness of saltpetre in which mingled hot breaths from the neighbouring stable. The openings of four galleries yawned here.
"This way," said Maheu to Étienne. "You're not there yet. It is still two good kilomètres."
The workmen separated, and were lost in groups in the depths of these black holes. Some fifteen went off into that on the left, and Étienne walked last, behind Maheu, who was preceded by Catherine, Zacharie, and Levaque. It was a large gallery for waggons, through a bed of solid rock, which had only needed walling here and there. In single file they still went on without a word, by the tiny flame of the lamps. The young man stumbled at every step, and entangled his feet in the rails. For a moment a hollow sound disturbed him, the sound of a distant storm, the violence of which seemed to increase and to come from the bowels of the earth. Was it the thunder of a landslip bringing on to their heads the enormous mass which separated them from the light? A gleam pierced the night, he felt the rock tremble, and when he had placed himself close to the wall, like his comrades, he saw a large white horse close to his face, harnessed to a train of waggons. On the first, and holding the reins, was seated Bébert, while Jeanlin, with his hands fastened to the edge of the last, was running barefooted behind.
They again began their walk. Farther on they reached cross ways, where two new galleries opened, and the band divided again, the workers gradually entering all the stalls of the mine.
[29]
