conclusions

At the bottom came Zacharie; Chava1 and Levaque were above him, and at the very top was Maheu. Each began by striking at the bed of schist, which he hollowed out with his pick; then he made two vertical cuts in the seam and loosened the lump by driving an iron gad into the upper part. The coal was soft, the lump broke into pieces and rolled over the miner's legs and chest. The board, however, arrested all further progress until the coal formed a heap around the man, who almost entirely disappeared in the narrow opening he had made.
It was Maheu who suffered most. Up top, where he found himself, the temperature rose to ninety-five degrees;  there was not a whiff of air, suffocation scemed almost imminent. In order to see he had been obliged to hang his lamp on a nail beside his head, and its heat scorched his skull. But his martyrdom was still farther aggravated by the dampness. A few inches above his face,  water oozed from the rock; large drops fell rapidly with obstinate rhythm, and always on the  exact same spot. Though he twisted his neck, and held his head back, he could not avoid them; they kept beat ing and splashing upon his face. At the end of a quarter of an hour he was drenched, and, what with the heat, steaming like a boiler. That morning, too, the water kept on falling in his eye, and made him swear. Still, he would not give up, but struck his hardest, shaking violently the while between the rocks, like a fly caught between the leaves of a book, and in danger of being absolutely flattened.
The toilers did not exchange a syllable. Nothing was heard but their irregular blows, muffled as if coming from distance, and falling upon the dead atmosphere without ever an echo The gloom, too, was dense, laden with flying coal; dust and oppressive gases, unrelieved by anything save the reddish flicker of the safety-lamps within cylinders of wire-gauze. Nothing could be plainly distinguished; the cutting opened and ascended like a flat chimney built obliquely, which the accumulated soot of a dozen winters filled with impenetrable gloom. Spectral forms moved about in it; the rounded contour of a hip, a knotty arm, and   a threatening head, begrimed as is for a contemplated crime, were visible now and then, but nothing more. At intervals some crystal-like glimmers flashed from the sharp edges of falling coal. Then everything became black again, and the picks went on dealing heavy, muffled blows, amidst the panting, oppressed chests, and the growling born of discomfort and fatigue beneath the heavy foul air and the downpour of water.