GERMINAL
behind the whirlwinds of white steam, filled with delight and with wide-grinning mouth in the joy of unchaining this hurricane.
This lasted nearly a quarter of an hour. A few buckets of water had been thrown over the heaps to complete their extinction; all danger of a fire had gone by, but the anger of the crowd had not subsided; on the contrary, it had been whipped up. The men went down with hammers, even the women armed themselves with iron bars; and they talked of smashing boilers, of breaking engines, and of demolishing the mine.
Étienne, forewarned, hastened to come up with Maheu. He himself was becoming intoxicated and carried away by this hot fever of revenge. He struggled, however, and entreated them to be calm, now that, with cut cables, extinguished fires, and empty boilers, work was impossible. He was not always listened to; and was again about to be carried away by the crowd, when hoots arose outside at a little low door where the ladder passage emerged.
"Down with the traitors!—Oh! the dirty chops of the cowards!—Down with them! down with them!"
The men were beginning to come up from below. The first arrivals, blinded by the daylight, stood there with quivering eyelids. Then they moved away, trying to gain the road and flee.
"Down with the cowards! down with the traitors!"
The whole band of strikers had run up. In less than three minutes there was not a man left in the buildings; the five hundred Montsou men were ranged in two rows, and the Vandame men, who had had the treachery to go down, were forced to pass between this double hedge. And as every fresh miner appeared at the door of the passage, covered with the black mud of work and with garments in rags, the hooting redoubled, and ferocious jokes arose. Oh! look at that one!—three inches of legs and then her arse! and this one with his nose eaten by those Volcan girls! and this other, with eyes pissing out enough wax to finish ten cathedrals! and this other, the tall fellow without a rump and as long as a Lent! An enormous putter-woman, who rolled out with her breast to her belly and her belly to her backsides, raised a furious laugh. They wanted to handle them, the joking increased and was turning to cruelty, blows would soon
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