The dawn would not require any bridge to get across.
"We're checked in our grand drive, kind of," he said, with a pathetic disappointment which his odd way of putting it did not disguise.

"We're checked, that's all, just like the Germans were--kind of." He knelt and let down the rest of his machine so that it might stand unaided, as if he would be considerate of those mud-covered, weary wheels.
And meanwhile the minutes passed.
"Anyway, you did _your_ part," he muttered.

And then, "If you only could swim." It was evident that the recent rains had swollen the stream which ordinarily flowed in the narrow bed between slanting shores so that the rushing water filled the whole space between the declivities and was even flooding the two ends of road which had been connected by a bridge.
An old ramshackle house, which Tom thought might once have been a boathouse, stood near, the water lapping its underpinning.

Close by it was a buoyed mooring float six or eight feet square, bobbing in the rushing water.

One of the four air-tight barrels which supported it had caught in the mud and kept the buoyant, raft-like platform from being carried downstream in the rush of water.
Holding his flashlight to his watch Tom saw that it was nearly fifteen minutes past four and he believed that about forty miles of road lay ahead of him.