two o'clock
Harden shrugged his shoulders and Forrester scowled a little sheepishly . Agnew , a serene , kindly fellow , began one of his endless Irish stories , and the incident appeared to be closed . The work assigned for the day was accomplished in shorter order than Milton had anticipated . By two o'clock all hands were back in camp and Milton decided to embark and move on as far as possible before nightfall . But scarcely had they finished loading the boats and tied on the tarpaulins when a heavy rain began to fall , accompanied by lightning and tremendous peals of thunder that echoed through the Canyon deafeningly . Milton , in his anxiety to get on with his task , would have continued in spite of the rain , but the others protested so vigorously that he gave in and the whole party crawled under a sheltering ledge beside the brook . For an hour the storm raged .