He had, in fact, arrived, and another voice cried from the bottom of the cutting:
"Well, is this the way to treat people? I have two kilometres to walk from Montsou and I am here first." It was Chaval, a tall, lean, bony fellow of twenty-five, with strongly marked features, who was in a bad humour at having to wait. When he saw Étienne he asked, with contemptuous surprise:
"What's that?"
And when Maheu had told him the story he added between his teeth:
"These men are eating the bread of girls."
The two men exchanged a look, lighted up by one of those instinctive hatreds which suddenly flame up. Étienne had felt the insult without yet understanding it. There was silence, and they got to work. At last all the seams were gradually filled, and the cuttings were in movement at every level and at the end of every passage. The devouring shaft had swallowed its daily ration of men: nearly seven hundred hands, who were now at work in this giant ant-hill, everywhere making holes in the earth, drilling it like an old worm-eaten piece of wood. And in the middle of the heavy silence and crushing weight of the strata one could hear, by placing one's ear to the rock, the movement of these human insects at work, from the flight of the cable which moved the cage up and down, to the biting of the tools cutting out the coal at the end of the stalls. Étienne, on turning round, found himself again pressed close to Catherine. But this time he caught a glimpse of the developing curves of her breast: he suddenly understood the warmth which had penetrated him.
"You are a girl, then!" he exclaimed, stupefied.
She replied in her cheerful way, without blushing:
"Of course. You've taken your time to find it out!"