Only the construction of tubbings, frameworks jointed like the stays of a barrel, could keep Out the springs which flow in and isolate the shafts in the midst of the lakes, which with deep obscure waves beat against the walls.

It had been necessary in sinking the Voreux to establish two tubbings: that of the upper level, in the shifting sands and white clays bordering the chalky stratum, and fissured in every part, swollen with water like a sponge; then that of the lower level, immediately above the coal stratum, in a yellow sand as fine as flour, flowing with liquid fluidity; it was here that the Torrent was to be found, that subterranean sea so dreaded in the coal pits of the Nord, a sea with its storms and its shipwrecks, an unknown and unfathomable sea, rolling its dark floods more than three hundred metres beneath the daylight.

Usually the tubbings resisted the enormous pressure; the only thing to be dreaded was the piling up of the neighbouring soil, shaken by the constant movement of the old galleries which were filling up.

Tubbings in sentence

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