GERMINAL
They were all at their ease. He asked himself at times if he was going up or down. Now and then, when the cage went straight without touching the guides, there seemed to be no motion, but rough shocks were afterwards produced, a sort of dancing amid the joists, which made him fear a catastrophe. For the rest he could not distinguish the walls of the shaft behind the lattice work, to which he pressed his face. The lamps feebly lighted the mass of bodies at his feet. Only the captain's free light, in the neighbouring tram, shone like a lighthouse.
"This is four mètres in diameter," continued Maheu, to instruct him. "The tubbing wants doing over again, for the water comes in everywhere. Stop! we are reaching the bottom: do you hear?"
Étienne was, in fact, now asking himself the meaning of this noise of falling rain. A few large drops had at first sounded on the roof of the cage, like the beginning of a shower, and now the rain increased, streaming down, becoming at last a deluge. The roof must be full of holes, for a thread of water was flowing on to his shoulder and wetting him to the skin. The cold became icy, and they were buried in black humidity when they passed through a sudden flash of light, the vision of a cavern in which men were moving. But already they had fallen back into darkness.
Maheu said:
"That is the first main level. We are at three hundred and twenty mètres. See the speed."
Raising his lamp he lighted up a joist of the guides which fled by like a rail beneath a train going at full speed, and beyond, as before, nothing could be seen. They passed three other levels in flights of light. The deafening rain continued to strike through the darkness.
"How deep it is!" murmured Étienne.
This fall seemed to last for hours. He was suffering for the wrong position he had taken, not daring to move, and especially tortured by Catherine's elbow. She did not speak a word; he only felt her against him and it warmed him. When the cage at last stopped at the bottom, at five hundred and fifty-four mètres, he was astonished to learn that the descent had lasted exactly one minute. But the noise of the bolts
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