The map had warned him of it, but not that it would be so big.
It was a torrent swollen with melting snow and rains in the hills, and it was running fifty yards wide.

Peter thought he could have swum it, but he was very averse to a drenching.

'A wet man makes too much noise,' he said, and besides, there was the off-chance that the current would be too much for him.

So he moved up stream to look for a bridge.
In ten minutes he found one, a new-made thing of trestles, broad enough to take transport wagons.

It was guarded, for he heard the tramp of a sentry, and as he pulled himself up the bank he observed a couple of long wooden huts, obviously some kind of billets.