The river had fallen so fast that it would be fordable
before morning.
But after midnight the clouds gathered, thunder crashed, lightning played
and the violent rain of a summer storm enveloped them again. Harry
viewed it at first with dismay, and then he found consolation. The
darkness and the storm would cover their retreat, as it had covered the
retreat of their enemy, Hooker, after Chancellorsville.
Harry and Dalton rode close behind Lee, who sat erect on his white horse,
supervising the first movement of troops over the new and shaking bridge.
Harry noted with amazement that despite his enormous exertions, physical
and mental, and an intense anxiety, continuous for many days, he did not
yet show signs of fatigue. Word had come that a part of the army was
already fording the river, near Williamsport, but this bridge near
Falling Waters was the most important point. General Lee and his staff
sat there on their horses a long time, while the rain beat unheeded upon
them.
Few scenes are engraved more vividly upon the mind of Harry Kenton than
those dusky hours before the dawn, the flashes of lightning, the almost
incessant rumble of thunder, the turbid and yellow river across which
stretched the bridge, a mere black thread in the darkness, swaying and
dipping and rising and creaking as horse and foot, and batteries and
ammunition wagons passed upon it.
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