into loose earth. They didn't take account of that in the bargain."
"Rascals!" growled Levaque. "They only want to bury us in it."
Zacharie began to laugh. He cared little for the work and the rest, but it amused him to hear the Company abused. In his placid way Maheu explained that the nature of the soil changed every twenty metres. One must be just; they could not foresee everything. Then, when the two others went on talking against the masters, he became restless, and looked around him.
"Hush! that's enough."
"You're right," said Levaque, also lowering his voice; "it isn't wholesome."
A morbid dread of spies haunted them, even at this depth, as if the shareholders' coal, while still in the seam, might have ears.
"That won't prevent me," added Chaval loudly, in a defiant manner, "from lodging a brick in the belly of that damned Dansaert, if he talks to me as he did the other day. I won't prevent him, I won't, from buying pretty girls with a white skin."
This time Zacharie burst out laughing. The head captain's love for Pierronne was a constant joke in the pit. Even Catherine rested on her shovel at the bottom of the cutting, holding her sides, and in a few words told Étienne the joke; while Maheu became angry, seized by a fear which he could not conceal.
"Will you hold your tongue, eh? Wait till you're alone if you want to get into trouble."
He was still speaking when the sound of steps was heard in the upper gallery. Almost immediately the engineer of the mine, little Négrel, as the workmen called him among themselves, appeared at the top of the cutting, accompanied by Dansaert, the head captain.
"Didn't I say so?" muttered Maheu. "There's always someone there, rising out of the ground."
Paul Négrel, M. Hennebeau's nephew, was a young man of twenty-six, refined and handsome, with curly hair and brown moustache. His pointed nose and sparkling eyes gave him the air of an amiable ferret of sceptical intelligence, which changed into an abrupt authoritative manner in his relations with the workmen. He was dressed like them, and like them smeared with coal; to make them respect him he exhibited a dare-devil courage, passing through the most difficult spots and always first when landslips or fire-damp explosions occurred.
"Here we are, are we not, Dansaert?" he asked.
The head captain, a coarse-faced Belgian, with a large sensual nose, replied with exaggerated politeness:
"Yes, Monsieur Négrel. Here is the man who was taken on this morning."
Both of them had slid down into the middle of the cutting. They made Étienne come up. The engineer raised his lamp and looked at him without asking any questions.
"Good," he said at last. "But I don't like unknown men to be picked up from the road. Don't do it again."
He did not listen to the explanations given to him, the necessities of work, the desire to replace women by men for the haulage. He had begun to examine the roof while the 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 metres, 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 heads are 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. Set to work, all of you; and I give you notice that the stall is fined 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 this hell a slow rebellion was rising within him. He looked at the resigned Catherine, with her lowered back. Was it possible to kill oneself at this hard toil, in this deadly darkness, and not even to gain the few pence to buy one's daily bread?
However, Négrel went off with Dansaert, who was content to approve by a continual movement of his head. And their voices again rose; they had just stopped once more, and were examining the timbering in the gallery, which the pikemen were obliged to look after for a length of ten metres behind the cutting.
"Didn't I tell you that they care nothing?" cried the engineer. "And you! why, in the devil's name, don't you watch them?"
"But I do—I do," stammered the head captain. "One gets tired of repeating things."
Négrel called loudly:
"Maheu! Maheu!"
They all came down. He went on:
"Do you see that? Will that hold? It's a twopenny-halfpenny construction! Here is a beam which the posts don't carry already, it was done so hastily. By Jove! I understand how it is that the mending costs us so much. It'll do, won't it? if it lasts as long as you have the care of it; and then it may go smash, and the Company is obliged to have an army of repairers. Look at it down there; it is mere botching!"
Chaval wished to speak, but he silenced him.
"No! I know what you are going to say. Let them pay you more, eh? Very well! I warn you that you will force the managers to do something: they will pay you the planking separately, and proportionately reduce the price of the trams. We shall see if you will gain that way! Meanwhile, prop that over again, at once; I shall pass to-morrow."
Amid the dismay caused by this threat he went away. Dansaert, who had been so humble, remained behind a few moments, to say brutally to the men:
"You get me into a row, you here. I'll give you something more than three francs fine, I will. Look out!"
Then, when he had gone, Maheu broke out in his turn:
"By God! what's fair is fair! I like people to be calm, because that's the only way of getting along, but at last they make you mad. Did you hear? The tram lowered, and the planking separately! Another way of paying us less. By God it is!"
He looked for someone upon whom to vent his anger, and saw Catherine and Étienne swinging their arms.
"Will you just fetch me some wood! What does it matter to you? I'll put my foot into you somewhere!"
Étienne went to carry it without rancour for this rough speech, so furious himself against the masters that he thought the miners too good-natured. As for the others, Levaque and Chaval had found relief in strong language. All of them, even Zacharie, were timbering furiously. For nearly half an hour one only heard the creaking of wood wedged in by blows of the hammer.
They no longer spoke, they snorted, became enraged with the rock, which they would have hustled and driven back by the force of their shoulders if they had been able.
"That's enough," said Maheu at last, worn out with anger and fatigue. "An hour and a half! A fine day's work! We shan't get fifty sous! I'm off. This disgusts me."
Though