"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: