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at mischief he could do; the idea had occurred to him to turn on the discharge taps and let off the steam. The jets came out with the violence of volleys; the five boilers were emptied with the sound of a tempest, whistling in such a roar of thunder that one's ears seemed to bleed. Everything had disappeared in the midst of the vapour, the hot coal grew pale, and the women were nothing more than shadows with broken gestures. The child alone appeared mounted on the gallery, behind the whirlwinds of white steam, filled with delight and grinning broadly 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. 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 hedg