After driving back the train, he whistled, and made his way to the depôt. The flaps of the immense door were open. La Lison penetrated the engine-house, a sort of gallery with double lines, about sixty yards long, and built to accommodate six locomotives. Within, it was very dark. Four gas-burners did not suffice to dispel the obscurity, which they seemed to deepen into four great moving shadows. But, at moments, the vivid flashes of lightning, set the glazed roof and the tall windows to right and left, ablaze; and one then distinguished, as in a flame of fire, the cracked walls, the timber black with smoke, all the tumble-down wretchedness of this out-of-date building. Two locomotives were already there, cold and slumbering. Pecqueux at once began to put out the fire. He violently raked it, and, the live coal escaping from the cinder-box, fell into the pit below. "I'm dying of hunger," said he. "I shall go and have a mouthful. Are you coming?" Jacques did not reply. In spite of his hurry, he did not wish to leave La Lison before the lights had been extinguished, and the boiler emptied. This was a scruple, the habit of a good driver, wherefrom he never departed. When he had time, he remained there until he had examined and wiped everything, with all the care that is taken to groom a favourite nag. It was only when the water ran gurgling into the pit, that he exclaimed: "Hurry on, hurry on!" A formidable flash of lightning interrupted him. This time, the tall windows stood out so distinctly against the flaming sky, that the very numerous broken panes of glass could have been counted. To the left, a thin sheet of iron, which had remained fixed in one of the vices serving for the repairs, resounded with the prolonged vibration of a bell. All the antiquated timber-work of the roof had cracked. "The devil!" simply said the fireman. The driver made a gesture of despair. This put an end to his appointment, and the more so, as a perfect deluge was now pouring down on the engine-house. The violence of the rain threatened to break the glazed roof. Up there some of the panes of glass must also have been broken, for big raindrops were falling on La Lison in clusters. A violent wind entered by the doors which had been left open, and anyone might have fancied that the body of the old structure was about to be swept away. Pecqueux was getting to the end of his work on the locomotive. "There!" said he; "we shall be able to see better to-morrow. I have no need to tidy it up any more to-night." And, returning to his former idea, he added: "I must get something to eat. It's raining too hard to go and stick oneself on one's mattress." The canteen, indeed, was at hand, against the depôt itself; while the company had been obliged to rent a house--Rue François-Mazeline--where beds had been provided for the drivers and firemen who passed the night at Havre. In such a deluge, they would have got drenched to the skin before arriving there.