But Wolfgang Elmhorst fought the battle to the bitter end. Step by step, as he had once conquered this domain, he now defended it. He would not succumb, would not give over his work to ruin; but whilst he was thus putting forth all the energies of his nature in saving it from destruction there rang in his ears incessantly the last words of old Baron von Thurgau: 'Have a care of our mountains, lest, when you are so arrogantly interfering with them, they rush down upon you and shatter all your bridges and structures like reeds. I should like to stand by and see the accursed work a heap of ruins!'
The gloomy prophecy seemed near its fulfilment, after all these years. Forests and rocks had been penetrated, streams turned aside, and the spacious mountain-realm bound in the iron fetters that were to make it subservient to human purposes. Men had boasted that they had subdued and chained the Alpine Fay, and now just as their work was drawing to a close she had arisen from her cloudy throne and angrily protested. She was descending in storm and destruction, and before her breath all the proud structures of man's devising were crumbling to ruin. No courage, no energy, no desperate struggle, availed; the savage elemental Force hurled to destruction in the space of a few days all that which it had cost human ingenuity years of toil to effect, laughing to scorn those who had dreamed of subduing it.
The Wolkenstein bridge, it is true, stood secure and firm when everything else was being swept away. Even the white, seething foam tossed aloft by the dashing river did not reach it, suspended as it was at a dizzy height above the abyss. And all the blasts of heaven raged in vain against the iron ribs of the huge structure. It rested upon its rocky foundations, as if built to bid defiance to destruction for all eternity.
The station which served as a temporary habitation for the engineer-in-chief had since the beginning of the storm been the head-quarters where all reports were received and whence all orders were issued. This portion of the railway had been hitherto thought secure, for at this place it crossed one of the narrow, deep valleys, passed over the Wolkenstein bridge, and then on the lofty steep cliffs turned again to the mountain-river, which just here made a large curve. The freshet which was so destructive to the lower stretch of railway could not reach this upper portion. But now glacial torrents had broken loose from the Wolkenstein, and the masses of mud and fragments of rock which they brought with them extended even to the bridge. The danger here must have been imminent, for Elmhorst himself was on the spot directing the labourers.