Night fell as they were approaching the great fork of the Nile. They took the Rosetta branch to throw off their landward pursuers, then cut east across the Delta, following small canals, and got across to the Damietta Fork by poling the boat over an expanse of flooded fields several miles wide. By the time the sun rose the following morning, they had struck their masts, and anything else that projected more than six feet above the waterline, and were surrounded by tall reeds in the marshy expanses to the east.