eight o'clock
They padded this crude couch with blankets . This finished , they made a stretcher of the blanket on which Milton lay , by nailing the sides to two small cedar trunks which they routed out of the drift wood . When they had lifted him carefully and had placed him in the Ida , stretcher and all , he was far more comfortable , he said , than he had been on his rigid bed of stone . By eight o'clock , all was ready and they pushed slowly out into the stream . Agnew took the steering oar , Enoch , his usual place , with Jonas behind him . The river was wild and swift here , but , after they had worked carefully and painfully out of the aftermath of the falls , the current was unobstructed for several hours . All the morning , Jonas watched eagerly for traces of the Na-che but up to noon , none appeared .