GERMINAL
gallery, in order to give himself a more solid fulcrum. The body had to be bent, the arms made stiff so as to push with all the muscles of the shoulders and hips. During the journey he followed her and watched her proceed with tense back, her fists so low that she seemed trotting on all fours, like one of those dwarf beasts that perform at circuses. She sweated, panted, her joints cracked, but without a complaint, with the indifference of custom, as if it were the common wretchedness of all to live thus bent double. But he could not succeed in doing as much; his shoes troubled him, his body seemed broken by walking in this way with lowered head. At the end of a few minutes the position became a torture, an intolerable anguish, so painful that he got on his knees for a moment to straighten himself and breathe.
Then at the upbrow there was more labour. She taught him to fill his tram quickly. At the top and bottom of this inclined plane, which served all the cuttings from one level to the other, there was a trammer—the breaksman above, the receiver below. These scamps of twelve to fifteen years shouted abominable words to each other, and to warn them it was necessary to yell still more violently. Then, as soon as there was an empty tram to send back, the receiver gave the signal and the putter embarked her tram, the weight of which made the other ascend when the breaksman loosened his break. Below, in the bottom gallery, were formed trains which the horses drew to the shaft.
“Here, you confounded rascals,” cried Catherine in the inclined way, which was entirely wooded, about a hundred mètres long, and resounded like a gigantic trumpet.
The trammers must have been resting, for neither of them replied. On all the levels haulage had stopped. A shirill girl’s voice said at last:
“One of them must be on Mouquette, sure enough!”
There was a roar of laughter, and the putters of the whole seam held their sides.
“Who is that?” asked Étienne of Catherine.
The latter named little Lydie, a scamp who knew more than she ought, and who pushed her tram as stoutly as a woman, in spite of her doll’s arms. As to Mouquette she was quite capable of being with both the trammers at once.
[37]
