Then they pulled out of the bushes and floated again with the stream, but they did not hoist their sail. The air after the close heat of the day was charged with electricity, and they looked for a storm. It came about 11 o'clock, chiefly as a display of thunder and lightning. The flashes of electricity dazzled them and continued without a break for almost an hour. The roar of the thunder was like the unbroken discharges of great batteries, but both wind and rain were light. Several times the lightning struck with a tremendous crash in the woods about them, but the boat glided on untouched. About midnight they came out into the flood of the Ohio, and, setting their sail, they steered down the center of the stream.
All of them felt great relief, now that they were on the wide Ohio. On the narrower tributary they might have been fired upon from either shore, but the Ohio was a half mile and sometimes a full mile from bank to bank. As long as they kept in the middle of the stream they were practically safe from the bullets of ambushed Indians.
They took turns at sleeping, but it was not necessary now to use the oars. The wind was still strong, and the sail carried them at great speed down the river. They felt safe and comfortable, but it was a wild and weird scene upon which they looked. The banks of the Ohio here were high and clothed in dense forest which, in the glare of the lightning, looked like gigantic black walls on either shore. The surface of the river itself was tinted under the blaze as if with fire, and often it ran in red waves before the wind. The darkness was intense, but the flashes of lightning were so vivid that they easily saw their way.
"We're going back on our old path now, Paul," said Henry. "You remember how we came up the river with Adam Colfax, fought the fleet of Timmendiquas, and helped save the fort?"
"I couldn't well forget it," replied Paul. "Why, I can see it all again, just as if it happened only yesterday, but I'm mighty glad that Timmendiquas is not here now with a fleet."
"Will we tie up to the bank by day as we did on the other river?" asked Mr. Pennypacker.
"Not on the Ohio," replied Henry. "As white immigrants are now coming down it, Indians infest both shores, so we'll keep straight ahead in the middle of the stream. We may be attacked there, but perhaps we can either whip or get away from anything that the Indians now have on the river."