midnight
No doubt they would have gone along the top of the bank to see if I had come out of the water again , and when they reached their friends on horseback and heard that I had not swum down the river , they would have concluded that I must have been drowned . Had I managed to cross , they would have seen me climb the opposite bank . `` In an hour the water had fallen to my shoulders , and when it became dark it was but waist-deep where I was sitting . To make a long story short , by midnight the water was below my feet and still falling rapidly . I waited a couple of hours and then started to cross . It was about fifty yards wide , and I was fully half-way over before it reached my chin . The stream had lost much of its force , and I had no difficulty in swimming across the rest of the way , though the water was deep until I was within a couple of yards of the bank .