GERMINAL
pikemen had taken up their picks again. Suddenly he called out:
"I say there, Maheu; have you no care for life? By heavens! You will all be buried here!"
"Oh! it's solid," replied the workman, tranquilly.
"What! solid! but the rock is giving already, and you are planting props at more than two mètres, as if you grudged it! Ah! you are all alike. You will let your skull be flattened rather than leave the seam to give the necessary time to the timbering! I must ask you to prop that immediately. Double the timbering—do you understand?"
And in face of the unwillingness of the miners who disputed the point, saying that they were good judges of their safety, he became angry.
"Go along! when your head is smashed, is it you who will have to bear the consequences? Not at all! it will be the Company which will have to pay you pensions, you or your wives. I tell you again that we know you; in order to get two extra trams by evening you would sell your skins."
Maheu, in spite of the anger which was gradually mastering him, still answered steadily:
"If they paid us enough we should prop it better."
The engineer shrugged his shoulders without replying. He had descended the cutting, and only said in conclusion, from below:
"You have an hour. Put yourselves to the work, all of you; and I give you notice that the stall has a fine of three francs."
A low growl from the pikemen greeted these words. The force of the system alone restrained them, that military system which, from the trammer to the head captain, ground one beneath the other. Chaval and Levaque, however, made a furious gesture, while Maheu restrained them by a glance, and Zacharie shrugged his shoulders chaffingly. But Étienne was, perhaps, most affected. Since he had found himself at the bottom of his hell a slow rebellion was rising within him. He looked at the resigned Catherine, with her lowered back. Was it possible to kill one's self at this hard toil, in this deadly darkness, and not even to gain the few pence to buy one's daily bread?
[46]
