"It's an effin' weir, that's what, too high to get round. We'll have to take the other fork. There's another weir but it's not so steep." Napoleon's voice was dispirited and exhausted. He felt at the end of his tether, worn out by the responsibilities of the river trip and now this at the end of it.
"If we're caught out here in the daylight, we'll be sussed by the rubbish-men and caught by the Woollies for sure." He thought for an instant and the others waited, the boat still staggering under the onslaught of the swirling water.
"Ship yer oars," he said at length, and as soon as the oars were on board he took one of them and began to punt the boat back the way they had come, while his crew sat uselessly on the benches of The Silver Belle Flower, squinting hard to right and left but seeing little. It was all too silent and ugly.
"Keep your eyes peeled for that fork in the creek," growled Napoleon, "otherwise I'll miss it and we'll be out on the Thames again. We must be hidden by dawn. This place is lousy with adults in daytime."
His fear was shared by the others. Already the high banks of the Wandle, held in place by slimy green sleepers and sheets of pitted iron, were taking on a shape and the black sky was not so black as it had been. "The fork, the fork," sang out Adolf. Napoleon let the boat drift round into the other branch of the Wandle.
"Get those oars going quick," he commanded, wrenching his own from a mud-bank that was reluctant to let it go. There was a nasty squelch as the oar came away and large dollops of sludge rolled begrudgingly down the wood and slunk back into the river.
Napoleon urged his crew on. The flow of the tide was less strong here and they soon went under a railway bridge, the boat bashing through floating atolls of muck like a trawler in pack-ice.
Another fork came up before them but Napoleon did not hesitate this time.
"Bow side paddle," he called, "stroke side rest, one, two, paddle," and the boat veered to the left.
"We went left last time and it was wrong," said Torreycanyon, loudly with some edge to his voice.
"Yeah," said someone else.
Napoleon's face became so white with anger that it glowed phosphorescent in the dark dawn. "Well, we're going left this time and it's right."
Suddenly there was a clang and a boom and Napoleon was knocked forward and thrown down in the scuppers. The boat stopped moving with a jolt and a scraping was heard as the bows made contact with something. Napoleon jumped to his feet rubbing his head.
"Damn you, don't talk to me when I'm navigating," he shouted. "We've gone and run into a pipe, could have drowned us."
Slung low over the water a huge pipe-line spanned the Wandle near a foot-bridge and it was this that had flung Napoleon to the deck.
"You at the stern, row hard," he cried. "This pipe's so low over the water that we'll have to force the boat under it. Don't fall in any of yer, there's eels in here will have yer leg off."
Those at the rear of the boat leaned on the oars while those at the front got down on their backs and tugged and shoved The Silver Belle Flower under the pipe-line. When they emerged on the far side it was easy enough for them to push the boat through, while those behind ducked under in their turn.
"It's not over yet," said Napoleon, "there's a real waterfall here, ten foot high, right under The Causeway. To get round it we've got to pull this boat up and out and over this bridge."
Above their heads was a high fence that had been made by the rubbish-men, using old bed frames, bedsteads and strips of metal. Napoleon took a pair of wire-cutters from his pocket and got Bingo to give him a leg-up. He clung to the bankside and cut all the springs out of one of the bed frames, making a gap large enough to get the boat through.
"Throw up the painter," he ordered next and when he had the rope in his hands he told the crew to jam their belongings firmly under the seats and then to climb up the bank to join him.
"We've got to get this bleeder up here," explained Napoleon, whose weariness had dropped from him under the excitement of leadership, "and drag it across this island we're on, then we'll be above both weirs, but we've got to hurry."
The Adventurers gathered around the painter and hauled and hauled and slowly The Silver Belle Flower came up from the water to hang vertically above the Wendle. Napoleon looped a couple of turns of the rope around a notice board which said, "Wandsworth Borough Council. Danger Keep Out." The others seized the bows of the boat and manhandled her to The Causeway. They puffed and they panted and waited a while to regain their breath.
"Right, four each side," said Napoleon. "I'll pull, the Jerry can push." "Not half," said Adolf.
They dragged and pushed the boat across a littered roadway where splintered glass and the debris from long abandoned houses made a crunching sound under the keel. Fifty yards they had to go; it was hard work and they slipped and stumbled and cursed, but at last they came to the main branch of the Wandle, well beyond the two dangerous weirs.
It was pale daylight now and the danger of being spotted in this open and desolate country was increasing every minute. Hurriedly they balanced their boat on the river bank and Napoleon grouped them together.
"When I give the word, we've got to push like hell. She should land flat on the water. If she don't, she'll sink."
Oh his command they all heaved together, and The Silver Belle Flower flew out into the air and belly-flopped onto the water, with a sound that reverberated like a gunshot across the no-man's land of the empty estuary. Before she could float away Napoleon dived down after the boat, sprawled between the benches, scrambled to his feet and threw the painter upwards into the hands of Torreycanyon.
"All back in," yelled the Wendle, "quick as yer like."
As the others embarked Knocker looked back the way they had come, and now in the weak light he could see.
Two black steam cranes guarded the mouth of the Wandle, square and ugly, covered in sheets of flimsy metal, and they had iron wheels which ran on iron rails. These machines it was that loaded the barges with rubbish, scratching patiently every day into mountains of garbage that were always replenished, never diminishing. Scattered lorries waited to go scouring across Wandsworth in search of more waste; huge tipper trucks and skip-carriers stood idle between piles of discarded stoves and gutted refrigerators. Far off, between the Wandle and Wandsworth Bridge, was a mile of undulating mud-coloured barrenness, relieved only by the blobs of white that were seagulls, big as swans, tearing at offal with beaks like baling-hooks.
Knocker shivered at the awesome beauty of it. "Strike a light," he said, "what a place."
"Come on," Napoleon's voice was harsh, "get a move on."
Knocker jumped down into the boat and took up his oar.
"Row on," called Napoleon with venom. "This 'ere Wandle's the steepest river in London, like rowing up Lavender Hill it is, with the traffic against yer."
The Adventurers bent forward. Their hands were sore, their backs ached and the tensions of the night had exhausted them. With their eyes closing and their muscles burning they rowed on and on, across a windswept landscape with no trees or buildings, until, after Armoury Way, they came by the back-yards of factories to Young's Ram Brewery and at last they heard Napoleon's soft command.
"Hold it steady now, ship yer oars."
They relaxed and the boat came gently to rest. Behind them dawn was lying along the streets of Wandsworth like a tired animal and the straight sides of the buildings, raised up in smoky yellow bricks, towered into a dusty sky. And very high, one bright window of light showed where an early morning bus-driver grumbled his way from a warm bed into a cold kitchen.
Napoleon did not allow the crew to rest for long. "Right, you lot, we're here!" he said, a certain amount of satisfaction in his voice, and the Borribles turned and not one of them didn't gasp in horror. In a cliff-like factory wall a deep hole was visible: a brick culvert, barely large enough to allow the passage of the boat, hardly high enough to clear the heads of the rowers. It dripped with green slime and Napoleon's voice echoed feebly around it, dying weakly, sucked into nothing. The stench was disgusting and solid, rolling out onto the straggling river in misty clouds, like the final gasps of a decaying beast.
"Swipe me, man," said Orococco, his eyes and teeth looking green in the queer light that floated up from the water, "we ain't going in there, I hope."
Napoleon stood up in the prow, his legs spread, his hands on his hips, like a ruffian pirate captain. "This is the River Wandle," he said. "An ordinary little river that flows under the houses."
"It stinks," said Bingo.
"You've had it too easy," retorted Napoleon, "this is Wandsworth where the best Borribles come from."
Knocker grinned to himself in spite of the trepidation he felt in common with his companions. Whatever else he thought about Napoleon Boot he had to admit that the Wendle had guts and style.
"Now, we're taking this boat in," said the navigator, "and anyone who don't like it can swim home in this." He bent and scooped up a handful of the river water and cast it into the gangway of the boat. The eyes of the Borribles were attracted by the evil-looking liquid while their bodies were repelled by it. The water hardly disintegrated at all but green globules of it rolled into the crevices of the woodwork to lie there glowing.