Kanal

The manhole was dingy and deep.   Boz went first, then Phoebles, then Ferdy  and Ginsbergbear brought up the rear, replacing the cover above his head in the interest of health and safety.   Clambering down a corroded iron ladder they descended, gingerly into the wondrous construct that is the subterranean world created by Joseph Bazalgette.   They were in a sewer, and Ferdy was wearing his best Rupertbear tartan trousers!   He produced a Penlite torch and flashed it along the tunnel.   It just about picked out a running shadowy figure.   "Got him!"
And thus began such an epic pursuit that it was recounted around the winter fires to kittens' kittens and their kittens and their kittens and their kittens and their kittens and their kittens and...
The victorian brickwork  enclosed vast vaulted chambers, wide tunnels, cramped oval culverts, described elegant arches, steps and pavements, water channels and weirs. there were iron stairs, ladders, walkways and pipes.   Ahead they would hear the clatter of heals on stone, the clank of soles on grating the splash of shoes in water; sometimes close, sometimes far away.   They ran alongside fast flowing streams, splashed through sluggish shallows, waded as water in the narrower passages deepened.
Eyes watched them from almost every side tunnel.   The rats down here were the size of Gloucester Old Spots, but remained aloof, neither helping McGoogs nor hindering our heroes.   Sometimes eyes on stalks, emerald or mauve or both at once, popped up out of the liquor, looked around and sank again followed by a stream of bubbles.

Often they thought they had lost him amongst the maze of passageways and interconnecting tunnels, but each time someone would hear a splash or scrape ahead and off they would go again.   When, eventually, the battery in Ferdy's flash-light died they found that many of the strange shapes floating on the liquid in which they paddled glowed a feint and unearthly green, casting just enough of a glimmer to see by once their eyes had adjusted.
A regular metallic ringing ahead hinted that someone was climbing an iron ladder and, half swimming, half wading under a low archway the quartet found themselves in a high chamber at the foot of a long vertical shaft.   The ladder ascending one side was new and galvanised there was a tiny circle of light at the top.   Within the chamber a noisome, gaseous vapour was writhing sluggishly across the surface of the sludge.   The climb began.
They emerged into the mind blowingly awe inspiring Pump Hall of the The Cathedral of the Sewers.   The great beam engines hissed, nodded and clunked to a slow rhythm, cast-iron pillars, arches and galleries soared in a dazzle of red lead, sky blue and gilt.   They were within the Abbey Mills Pumping Station whose architectural wizardry had eclipsed the Taj Mahal, the Brighton Pavilion and all but rivalled the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station.
A door banged.   The great outer double-doors had been flung back and were rebounding.   The gang rushed through and out into the blighted wastelands that straddle the margins between middle earth and the world ocean.   Ahead of them scrambling and lurching across the marshes ran Slasher, coat tails flapping around his bent form like a wounded bat.
"Come on!" cried Boz between rasping breaths and they resumed their chase onto the hinterland that is the Lea Delta.   Mist clung languidly in the canals and channels between tussocks of coarse, grey grasses.   A sullen sky loomed, a dense, wide mass over the land of doom, pressing fortitude and vigour down into the very boots of the pursuers.
Ginsbergbear was winded and beginning to split along his seams; Phoebles was germinating the hint of a possibility that his love of food was in the early stages of compromising his waistline and stamina;   Ferdy was failing to understand why evolution had deprived dodos of the more useful parts of their wings without making their legs longer; and the dank, sodden salt-marsh, after so many hours wading through Mr Bazalgette's slurry, was not helping with Boz's rheumatics.   They were thrashing and gasping through the mud and bog plants as Slasher McGoogs struggled onto a long and weather beaten wooden jetty - at its far end the low, rusting form of a battered old Bovril boat, belching black smoke from its stack.   This was the final destination of London's night soil.   Liquid and solids were separated and the purified water bottled and lightly effervesced by a process known as methanisation, for sale to the Savoy Hotel as a palate freshener for those who had been tempted towards the famed civet poo coffee.   The lumpy bits were loaded onto the Bovril boats and taken into the North Sea where an artificial and highly fertile reef was being built up for the benefit of the native marine life.
As his pursuers closed, a rotten plank cracked beneath Slasher and he fell forwards twisting a trapped foot.   He got up, limped a few paces and collapsed again.   Phoebles was jubilant and Ferdy managed a merry, "Ahaa!"   They would be able to surround him at last.
But then Slasher was on his unsteady feet, splay-legged and swaying.   Something cold, black and threatening sat in the hand that he waved towards them.   Ferdy and Phoebles, Ginsbergbear and Boz each had the unpleasant and highly personal experience of staring down the dangerous end of a Mauser Red Nine.
"Stand still!  Stay where you are!   Hands where I can see them!"
No one was arguing.
"This has gone far enough.   Now listen.   I am going away; something of a cruise.   You won't hear of me for a while.   But you lot have work to do.   Boz, there's a battle coming.   Let it - you couldn't stop it anyway.   Put up a good fight, but no heroics.   Don't let anyone get seriously hurt and when you loose - and you will lose - no fighting to the last man.   Disperse - and definitely, DON'T LET ANYONE BE CAPTURED.   That last bit's really important.
"Now, Ferdinand, soon as it's all done get down to the Isle of Dogs.   We've got the Dragon Rapide at a temporary air strip on Mud Chute Farm, the pilot will have a little job for you.   All of you... Don't screw up."   He turned and began a long slow limp down the jetty.
Several figures appeared on the Bovril boat.   They had wrinkled walnut hides, faded, moth-eaten guernseys, bandanas, stubs of clay pipe.   Some cast off the mooring lines, some helped Slasher over the rail.   The black funnel-smoke intensified, a shrill steam whistle sent plovers and sandpipers soaring skyward, and the bronze screw churned water beneath the stern.   The unassuming vessel left the jetty, rippled the mirror surface of a Thames at slack water and turned for the open sea.