The bank above him was rather high and quite steep, for which he was glad, as it afforded protection.  A half mile farther down he came to the mouth of a creek coming in from the South, and just as he passed it he heard voices on the bank.  He held his boat among the bushes on the cliff and listened.  Several men were talking, but he judged them to be farmers, not soldiers.  Yet they talked of the battle that night, and Harry surmised that they were looking at the lights in the Southern camp which might yet be visible from the high point on which they stood.  He could not gather from their words whether they were Northern or Southern sympathizers, but it did not matter, as he had no intention of speaking to them, hoping only that they would go away in a few minutes and let him continue his journey unseen.

His hope speedily came to pass.  He heard their voices sinking in the distance, and leaving the shelter of the bushes he pulled down the stream once more.  Then he found that he had deceived himself about the clouds.  If they had retired, they had merely recoiled, to use the French phrase, in order to gather again with greater force.

During his short stay among the bushes at the foot of the cliff the whole heavens had blackened and the air was surcharged with the heavy damp and tensity that betoken a coming storm.  The lightning blazed across the river thrice, and he heard a mutter which was not that of cannon.  Then came rain and a rushing wind and the surface of the river was troubled grievously.  It rose up in waves like those of a lake, and Harry’s boat rocked and tumbled so badly that in a few minutes it was half-full of water.

Fearing he might sink, carrying with him his great message, he pulled again, but fiercely now, for the southern bank and the shelter of the bushes, which, fortunately for him, grew here in the water’s edge.  He shoved his boat with all his might among them, as their tops snapped and crackled in the hurricane.  But he knew he was safe there, and he continued to push until it reached the edge of the land.

The river would be swollen by another storm, but for the present it did not bother him greatly.  He was more immediately concerned with his wish to get back to Lee as soon as possible, and he was grateful for that dense clump of bushes, growing in the very water’s edge, because the wind was blowing like a hurricane and the waves were chasing one another on the Potomac, like the billows on a lake.  He was a fair oarsman, but it would have taken greater skill than his to have kept his boat afloat in the tempestuous river.

The bushes formed an absolute protection.  His boat swayed with them, which saved it from being damaged, and the overhanging lee of the cliff kept most of the rain from him.  He also wrapped about his body the pair of blankets that he always carried, and he sat there not only in safety, but with a certain physical pleasure.