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 dig.