The astonishing feat of Erostarbe was almost equalled by Alexander Lambert, one of the finest submarine workers who ever lived and the chief diver of Siebe, Gorman & Company. He covered himself with glory during the building of the Severn tunnel when, owing to an error, a door was left open and the workings were flooded. The water rose some forty feet up the shaft leading to the workings, and it was impossible to continue building the tunnel until this door was closed. [Illustration: DIVERS GOING DOWN AFTER THE TREASURE OF THE OCEANA. NOTE THE DOUBLE-HANDED AIR PUMP WHICH THE TWO ATTENDANTS ARE WORKING] Realizing that the only thing to be done was to send down a diver to close the door, the engineers called on Lambert to essay the task. Descending the ladder of the shaft, Lambert disappeared under water and made his way to the bottom, where not a single ray of light could penetrate. Feeling round the wall of the shaft, he found the opening to the tunnel, and began slowly to venture along. But the rush of water had worked tremendous havoc, and the tunnel was strewn with debris which was most difficult to negotiate. At any moment Lambert’s air-pipe was in danger of being cut by some projecting piece of the wreckage, and, in addition to the weight of his dress, he was terribly hampered by the weight of the 1200 feet of air-pipe which he was forced to drag along after him as he stumbled about the workings. Hearing of Lambert’s baffling problems, Fluess, the inventor of the diving dress which dispensed with the air-pipe, volunteered to go down in his self-contained dress and see what he could do. Fluess was a clever inventor, but the only diving he had ever done was in connection with his experiments on his new type of dress. Besides being a clever inventor, he proved himself a man of courage. He arrived on the spot with his diving dress, and studied the plans of the workings to find out which way he had to turn when he got to the bottom of the shaft. He thought it would then be just a question of walking through the tunnel, finding the door and closing it, little knowing that the place was in a deplorable condition and beset with all sorts of obstacles. “Lambert had better go down first to take off my life-line and tell me which way to go. He knows the place a bit by now,” the inventor suggested.