n.

VII

However, the more they went on, the more alarmed the miners grew.
Whither was the old man leading them? What would happen if they lost
themselves in the labyrinth of these subterranean galleries, whose
silence had not been disturbed for long years? The darkness itself
seemed startled by the sight of this terrified crowd. The miners would
have gladly halted, but what would happen then? To go back was to go to
certain destruction. As long as they followed Ivan, they had a vague
hope of some mysterious aid, reckoning on the unknown power which
supported him and had restored to him for some hours a little of his
former vigour for the deliverance of his comrades perhaps. Those who had
no belief in this hesitated nevertheless to separate from the rest,
knowing not what to do in this silence and darkness. If they had to die,
they would die together. At any rate, they soon understood that they
would have inevitably perished in the gallery which they had just left,
for they had hardly been following the old man for an hour when a dull
and prolonged sound was heard in the distance. Then it came nearer, as
though it were pursuing them. Its last echo seemed to them quite close,
behind the wall they were skirting at that moment. It was evident that
the gallery where they worked, as well the one which they had just
quitted, had both fallen in. If they had remained there, they would have
shared the fate of those of their comrades whose hands and feet only
were projecting from the mass of earth which covered them.

The distant shock also re-echoed in the gallery they were traversing
when they heard it. Fragments of earth fell from the roof and a great
rock suddenly projected just above old Ivan's head, while the wall on
the right hand bulged out. The miners rushed forward terrified, but Ivan
stopped them and made them go more slowly. Some cowards flung themselves
on their stomachs and hid their faces, but they were lifted up and
obliged to proceed. The gallery they were now in became narrower and
narrower. After having begun their march five abreast, they could now
only go two by two with difficulty. A few minutes more, and they were
obliged to walk in single file. Then the chief miner let the rest go in
front of him and took the last place. He was among the few who had not
lost their heads and acted thus, lest some cowards might remain behind
stretched on the ground in an access of blind fear.

The gallery became ever m