It was decided to leave two Borribles as lookouts while the others slept. Knocker volunteered for the first watch, and Orococco stood with him. The rest of the crew unrolled their sleeping-bags and curled up as best they could in the bottom of the boat.
Knocker kept his watch looking down the grey dawn of the river. Orococco stared upstream and hummed a song, a sad song, and Knocker felt wiser and bigger in himself as he listened, even though the song was sad.
The Thames was busy now. The two lookouts could hear the sound of hooting tugs and the swish and the slap of the wash thrown up by passing barges, low in the water, nearly sinking under the weight of tons and tons of cargo: coal for the power stations and containers bound for the London Docks.
The first hour of the watch soon passed and Knocker was beginning to feel sleepy when he heard a very slight noise above him on the deck of the nearest barge. He tensed his muscles, slid his catapult from his back pocket and loaded it with a stone from his bandolier. Slowly he stood up and pulled the chunky elastic back so that it was half ready. He glanced quickly up the boat but Orococco was facing the other way, his head nodding. He looked asleep; Knocker waited.
The boat rocked and the Borribles slept on. A scrabbling sound, very cautious, came from above. It seemed to Knocker that someone was trying to find a way out from underneath the tarpaulin that covered the lighter which gave them protection on the shore side. Knocker ran his gaze along the iron wall of the barge, along the criss-cross of ropes that held the tarpaulin down. He could see nothing. Again he looked towards the other end of the boat. Orococco's head still nodded.
The scrabbling noises stopped. Then Knocker heard the noise of a knife making a slit in canvas. He pulled the rubber of his catapult tighter, but as yet he had nothing to aim at. Suddenly there was a splitting sound and a small figure dressed in green and brown burst into view on the very edge of the barge right above The Silver Belle Flower. Whoever it was had his back towards Knocker, who, aiming for the kidneys, pulled the catapult to its full extent and let fly. He heard a pained intake of breath and the intruder teetered back and forth as if he could not decide which way to fall. At that moment Orococco turned, his catapult in his hand. He had been feigning sleep, only waiting for the unseen enemy to appear. He took in the situation, saw the target and fired, but luckily, as it proved, he missed. As Orococco's stone sped from his catapult the newcomer lost his balance and fell headlong and heavily into the boatload of Borribles, landing in a crumpled heap between Knocker and the first seat. Knocker threw down his catapult and leapt on the interloper, holding him down while Orococco stumbled over the sleeping forms of his companions to give assistance.
In spite of the blow from the stone, and in spite of the fall from the barge the new arrival was putting up a spirited struggle. He shouted in some strange language and twice managed to get to his feet, before finally he was pinioned to the deck by the two guards. By this time Stonks and Torreycanyon were awake and the combined weight of the four of them was too much for the foreigner. With a sigh and a curse he stopped struggling.
"All right, all right, I give no more trouble," he said, and his accent was thick and heavy, though his English was straightforward and easy to understand.
"Get some rope," said Knocker quickly to Napoleon who had now joined the group, "and we'll tie him up while we see what we've caught."
Bingo, too, had winkled his body from his sleeping-bag and suggested that he and Vulge scout round on top of the barges to see if there was anybody else around.
Sydney and Chalotte made a step with their hands and Bingo sprang upwards and pulled himself out of sight. Vulge followed him but they both returned in a minute with the welcome information that all was clear. No one else on the barges, nothing suspicious on the river.
The Borribles looked down at their prisoner.
"Is it a normal—a child?" asked Chalotte. Napoleon bent over and pulled off the balaclava hat in leather that the captive was wearing. The ears were pointed, very much so. They had captured a Borrible, and moreover a foreign Borrible.
"Could you please rub me here, on the back?" said the foreigner in his strange voice, and gesturing as well as he could with his bound hands. "That stone you catapulted hit me hard."
Stonks, who was kind as well as very strong, propped up the prisoner and massaged his back for a while. "Oh, thank you, thank you, I feel better now."
"Borrible?" asked Knocker. "Borrible," affirmed the other. "All right, I'll ask the questions," said Napoleon. "I'm captain of this ship." He crouched down before the captive. "If you're a Borrible, where do you come from? Not from London, I'll be bound."
"No," said the foreigner, and he actually laughed. "I'm from Hamburg."
"Blimey," said Orococco, "an immigrant." "Cut that out, 'Rococco," said Napoleon angrily, "we haven't got time for joking."
"Who's joking?" said the black Borrible, grinning from ear to ear. Chalotte laughed too.
"What's your name?" asked the navigator. "My name," said the prisoner, trying to draw himself up proudly even though he was bound hand and foot and prostrate, "is Adolf Wolfgang Amadeus."
"Swipe me," said Torreycanyon in disbelief, "three names! Don't they have the same rules in Hamburg?" "Yes," said Knocker, "Borribles have the same set-up everywhere."
"That means he's had three adventures, and successful ones," said Sydney, and she looked at Adolf with a new interest.
"That's all very well, but he's a nuisance," said Napoleon. "He's in the way. He'll have to swim ashore, and then make his own way back to Hamburg."
Adolf laughed again. "You have got it all wrong, my friends, I am not superfluous, I am extra. I have come along to join you. I am a great fighter, an experienced general, a marvellous shot with the catapult and I have a high rate of survival. My three names prove that, verdammt. "
"What do you mean—join us?" asked Napoleon. "We're not going anywhere, this is . . . just a kind of outing."
"Outing," scoffed Adolf. "You are the Best of the Borribles, the Magnificent Eight—though indeed I see nine of you—and you are going to Rumbledom to teach those rabbits a lesson." And Adolf guffawed so loudly they had to tell him to be quiet in case they were spotted.
The captors now looked more uncomfortable than the captive. "How do you know all that?" asked Knocker, breaking his silence. He grasped the German by the collar and shook him. "How did you know? Come on, spill the beans, you little kraut."
Adolf didn't look at all perturbed. "Hamburg is a port; often we get English Borribles stowing away on ships for their name adventure. Over there we are hospitable to foreign Borribles. We do not tie them up and slosh them round the head."
"Get on with it," Knocker urged.
"Not so long ago, we had a Battersea Borrible arrive, very tired, very hungry. I took him into my house, gave him food and beer. We became good friends; he lived under the arches by Battersea Park railway station, he said. Perhaps you know him, no? Anyway, he had been at the meeting when Knocker, that's you, ha ha, ho ho," Adolf Wolfgang Amadeus laughed at Knocker's surprise, "you had captured a Rumble and it was decided to send an expedition to Rumbledom. My friend, the name he won by the way is Steamer, good, isn't it? Anyway Steamer told me all about it, and I said, verdammt, what an adventure, what a chance for me to get a fourth name, and in England, too, with English Borribles! What a name I shall have then: Adolf Wolfgang Amadeus Winston." He looked round proudly, pleased with himself. "What do you think, is that not a name and another half?"
"No!" said Napoleon, who didn't like the name at all.
"So I came to Battersea High Street to see what you did, but, I thought, they will never let me on the boat there, they will just leave me behind, but I must get on the boat, and to get on the boat I have to get on the river, so at high tide I waited on Battersea Bridge and when there is a barge going under, with a nice soft load in it, I jump and here I am. I meant to watch for you going by and swim out so you couldn't put me ashore, but the bargemen covered me over with canvas—luckily for me you have come here instead."
"We can throw you ashore from here, too," said Napoleon, "quite easily."
"I wouldn't do that," said Adolf, leaning back in his bonds quite relaxed.
"And why not?"
"Oh, you wouldn't want anyone to know which way you were coming, and if you let me go, I might go around chatting about what I saw on the river and it might get to the ears of the Rumbles, and the element of surprised . . . lost . . . A pity? Stimmt ?"