And now a drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets along the ground.

The boys cried out to each other, but the roaring wind and the booming thunder-blasts drowned their voices utterly.
However, one by one they straggled in at last and took shelter under the tent, cold, scared, and streaming with water; but to have company in misery seemed something to be grateful for.

They could not talk, the old sail flapped so furiously, even if the other noises would have allowed them.

The tempest rose higher and higher, and presently the sail tore loose from its fastenings and went winging away on the blast.
The boys seized each others' hands and fled, with many tumblings and bruises, to the shelter of a great oak that stood upon the river-bank.
Now the battle was at its highest.

Under the ceaseless conflagration of lightning that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in clean-cut and shadowless distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy river, white with foam, the driving spray of spume-flakes, the dim outlines of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the drifting cloud-rack and the slanting veil of rain.