The men abandoned everything hurriedly, and rushed madly for their lives from the incoming avalanche of water. For days the tunnel was absolutely inaccessible. Not content with flooding the workings, the impetuous torrent completed its devastation by sweeping away many of the supports to the line conveying the water to the drills under a pressure of 1,500 pounds per square inch, leaving the slender conduit of this great force hanging in graceful festoons in mid-air. Some of these gaps were as much as 260 feet in width, and had a break in the pipe occurred widespread damage would have been caused. But the engineers set to work, and reconstructed the temporary dam that had thus been torn roughly away and rebuilt the river’s new channel. At the same time they adopted such precautions as would preclude the possibility of the waterway again inundating the tunnel in times of the most severe floods. Such incidents, however, are inherent to works of this character. The inundation was but one means adopted by Nature to thwart the advance of the iron road. Work had scarcely been resumed, when another disaster occurred. The drills were whirring merrily against the rock face in the tunnel, and the drillers were light-heartedly conversing with one another as they fed the boring giant in its rock-penetrating task. Suddenly there was a cry of alarm. Water was trickling rapidly from a bore-hole; it rapidly increased in volume. The drillers hurriedly withdrew their tools and backed down the cavern. There was a roar, and a limpid stream burst from the rock face. The drillers stampeded; they had tapped a subterranean spring, and it was now rushing forth with fiendish violence. The engineers hastened to the front. Such a contingency had been expected, for such incidents are inseparable from tunnelling tasks of this magnitude. The rushing stream was turned into one of the conduits at the side to carry it to the tunnel mouth, where it expended its energy harmlessly by tumbling wildly among the rocks. When pockets of water and springs are tapped in this manner, the question is to control the water so encountered in such a manner that it does not interfere with the drilling work or flood the workings. As a matter of fact, when the Simplon tunnel was in progress these underground springs were harnessed and compelled to perform useful work; they were thrown against the rock face to keep down the internal temperature.