ccurred, had leaned far out of his cab as the train thundered by at
right angles to the "fill," and with cupped hands to his mouth, had
hurled this yell into the ravine:

"Water! Look out! Everything busted up above! Water! Water! Run, for
God's sake!"

The men stood irresolute, but MacFarlane sprang to instant action.
Grabbing the man next him,--an Italian who understood no English--he
dragged him along, shouting to the others, the crowd swarming up,
throwing away their shovels in their flight until the whole posse
reached a point of safety near the mouth of the tunnel.

There he turned and braced himself for the shock. He realized fully what
had happened: McGowan's ill-constructed culvert had sagged and choked;
a huge basin of water had formed behind it; the retaining walls had been
undermined and the whole mass was sweeping down upon him. Would there be
enough of it to overflow the crest line of his own "fill" or not? If it
could stand the first on-thrust there was one chance in a hundred of its
safety, provided the wing-walls and the foundations of the culvert held
up its arch, thus affording gradual relief until the flood should have
spent its force.

It was but a question of minutes. He could already see the trees sway as
the mad flood struck them, the smaller ones rebounding, the large ones
toppling over. Then came a dull roar like that of a tram through a
covered bridge, and then a great wall of yellow suds, boiling, curling,
its surface covered with sticks, planks, shingles, floating barrels,
parts of buildings, dashed itself against the smoothed earth slopes
of his own "fill," surged a third of its height, recoiled on itself,
swirled furiously again, and then inch by inch rose toward the top.
Should it plunge over the crest, the "fill" would melt away as a
rising tide melts a sand fort, the work of months be destroyed, and his
financial ruin be a certainty.

But the man who had crawled out on the shore end of the great cantilever
bridge over the Ohio, and who had with his own hands practically set the
last rebellious steel girder one hundred feet above the water level, had
still some resources left. Grabbing a shovel from a railroad employee,
he called to his men and began digging a trench on the tunnel end of the
"fill" to form a temporary spillway should the top of the flood reach
the crest of the road bed.

Fifty or more men sprang to his assistance with pick and shovel wherever
one could stand and d