"Then you got it away?"

"Not that, either. We were fighting across the mud flats, they had it halfway to the shore, we came back at them, we did for every last one of them, and when we looked for the box, to get it back into the boat, there it was, sinking in the mud. We couldn't even get hold of a handle, it went down so quick. You know what that mud is like, like a live thing with the grip of a python. The mud is deep there, deeper than anywhere else along the Wandle. The old stories say it goes down to the centre of the earth."

There was a long silence. Then Napoleon spoke again. "I had to come back to tell you. I wanted you to know before anything happened that I'd done my best. The money's gone for ever, and even Flinthead can't get it where it's gone. But the others got away, Knocker, don't forget that. We done the Rumbles—and our Adventure was surely the best ever. That's what counts, isn't it?"

Knocker knelt by the wounded and mud-splattered Wendle and took his hand gently in his own. "You are right, sod the money! We have done great things and it has been a great Adventure. They will sing songs about all of us."

"Flinthead's going to sing one to us right now," said Orococco who had been watching the enemy. "Here he comes, to tell us no doubt what lovely treats he has in store."

"He'll go raving lunatic when he finds out about the money," said Napoleon, and the four of them inched over to the tunnel opening, knowing, but not saying, that they were doomed to an early and unpleasant death.