Page:Walker (1888) The Severn Tunnel.djvu/210

Rh “Grip”&thinsp;’ (a small ditch at the side of the heading) ‘must be blocked. Push back a skip or two to clear it out.’

The men had hardly done so, when, to use the words of the ganger, ‘the water broke in from the bottom of the face of the heading, rolling up all at once like a great horse,’ It swept the men and the iron skips like so many chips out through the door and into the finished tunnel; and it was only when the water spread itself over the whole width of the tunnel that they were able to gather themselves up, and save themselves from being precipitated down the old shaft into the lower works. They were swept through the door without the power to check their passage, but they at once endeavoured to work their way back again up the heading, holding one another and clinging to the timbers at the side, to shut the door, if it were in any way possible. All their efforts failed, for the water was running down the heading in a stream 10 feet wide and 3 feet 6 inches deep, and with such rapidity and force that no man could stand against it.

Anxiously we watched the rising of the water. We found that it was rapidly gaining upon the pumps; that it was already 10 or 12 feet deep in the tunnel under the shoots; that the men had all escaped; but that the horsekeeper had, in his terror, ridden off on one of the cobs, and left three others to drown.

Finding, on my arrival at the shaft, that the