Tom crossed the road and entered the thicket on the other side. Now the river sounded below him, and he decided that he must be close to the edge of an embankment. He crept forward slowly on his hands and knees through the tangle of branches, feeling the ground before him. One hand went off into space, and he groped about. Then he drew back and waited for another moment of moonlight to show him his position. When it came, a few minutes later, he saw the Tennessee, swollen and tossing, forty feet below him. He was on the edge of a sheer embankment. "Can't do it here," he said, moving away. He crawled back to the road, crossed it, and walked in the direction of Chattanooga. Presently he heard someone yelling in the distance. He decided that it was the horseman calling a farmer from his bed and warning him of the escaped Yankee. After a half-hour of slow traveling, he made his way towards the river again. Now the dawn was coming, and the water rippled luminously as Tom looked over the embankment. At this point, the descent to the water's edge was more gradual--a straight drop of twelve feet, then a slope of gravel. Once down there, he would have no choice but to swim the river, and swimming in such a current was no easy matter. Would it be better, he asked himself, to go farther down, to risk another half-hour in exploring! His thoughts were interrupted suddenly by voices on the road, twenty yards behind him. A man said: "Reckon this is as good a spot as any. Out there I can see as far up as Johnson's and a mile down." "Suit yourself," answered the other; "you know the country. I'll go down an' get Phipps out if nobody else has. Then I'll be back along up this way and tell the boys that you're here." "You say this Yank's a young man?" "'Bout twenty, I'd say." "How many of them were there that stole the train?" "The stories are all different. Some say five and some say fifty. Can't tell. Well, I'll see you later." Tom swung over the edge of the embankment and dropped. He struck the loose gravel and rolled down with the gravel sliding after him in a great wave. It seemed incredible that the men should not hear him, but he trusted to the noise of the river and ran down along the water's edge. Presently he came to a large rock projecting from the embankment and dodged behind it. There he sank down to get breath for his next move. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN FIGHTING THE RIVER Tom began to explore the rock behind which he had taken refuge. It projected several feet from the side of the embankment, and the wash of the water in former days when the river was even higher than at present had carried away the dirt on the down-stream side, forming a small pocket. In the darkness, he ran his hands over the wall of it. There was room enough for him there if he sat with his knees drawn up under his chin. He squeezed himself in, and fell to considering what he had better do next.