When we had tied the boat up by one of the islands, it was still early. George said it would be a good idea to have a really excellent supper. He said we could use all kinds of things, and all the bits of food we had left. We could make it really interesting, and we could put everything into one big pan together. George said he would show us how to do it.

After lunch, we moved on to Wargrave and Shiplake, and then to Sonning. We got out of the boat there, and we walked about for an hour or more. It was too late then to go on past Reading, so we decided to go back to one of the Shiplake islands. We would spend the night there.

We liked this idea, so George collected wood to make a fire. Harris and I started to prepare the potatoes. This became a very big job. We began quite happily. However, by the time we had finished our first potato, we were feeling very miserable. There was almost no potato left. George came and looked at it.

We worked very hard for twenty-five minutes. At the end of that time we had done four potatoes. We refused to continue.

'Oh, that's no good. You've done it wrong! Do it like this!'he said.

It was a very good meal. It was different from other meals. The potatoes were a bit hard, but we had good teeth, so it did not really matter.

After supper Harris was rather disagreeable -- I think it was the meal which caused this. He is not used to such rich food. George and I decided to go for a walk in Henley, but we left Harris in the boat. He said he was going to have a glass of whisky, smoke his pipe, and then get the boat ready for the night. We were on an island, so when we came back we would shout from the river bank. Then Harris would come in the boat and get us. When we left, we said to him,'Don't go to sleep!'

George said it was stupid to have only four potatoes, so we washed about six more. Then we put them in the pan without doing anything else to them. We also put in some carrots and other vegetables. But George looked at it, and he said there was not enough. So then we got out both the food baskets. We took out all the bits of things that were left, and we put them in, too. In fact, we put in everything we could find. I remember that Montmorency watched all this, and he looked very thoughtful. Then he walked away. He came back a few minutes later with a dead rat in his mouth. He wanted to give it to us for the meal. We did not know if he really wanted to put it in the pan, or if he wanted to tell us what he thought about the meal. Harris said he thought it would be all right to put the rat in. However, George did not want to try anything new.

After some time, we found the river, and that made us happy. We knew that we were going the right way. We passed Shiplake at a quarter to twelve, and then George said, quite slowly. ' You don't remember which island it was, do you?'

We imagined that we were inside our warm little boat, tired and a little hungry, with the dark, miserable river outside. We could see ourselves -- we were sitting down to supper there; we were passing cold meat and thick pieces of bread to each other. We could hear the happy sounds of our knives and our laughing voices. We hurried to make it real.

It was a dark and miserable night. It was quite cold, and it was raining a bit. We walked through the dark, silent fields, and we talked quietly to each other. We wondered if we were going the right way. We thought of our nice, warm, comfortable boat. We thought of Harris, and Montmorency, and the whisky -- and we wished that we were there.

Henley was very busy, and we met quite a lot of people we knew in town. The time passed very quickly. When we started off on our long walk back, it was eleven o'clock.

' No, I don't,'I replied, and I began to think carefully. 'How many are there?'

'And if he isn't awake?'I asked.

But we decided not to think about that.

'Only four,'George answered. 'It'll be all right, if Harris is awake. '

'Oh, I remember now,'George said. 'It was the third one. '

When we arrived opposite the first island, we shouted, but there was no answer. So we went to the second island, and we tried there. The result was the same.

It was now becoming serious. It was after midnight. The hotels were all full, and we could not go round all the houses and knock on doors at midnight! George said that perhaps we could go back to Henley, find a policeman and hit him. He would arrest us and take us to a police station, and then we would have somewhere to sleep. But then we thought, 'Perhaps he won't arrest us. Perhaps he'll just hit us, too!'We could not fight policemen all night.

And, full of hope, we ran to the third one, and we called out. There was no answer.

We tried the fourth island, but there was still no reply. It was raining hard now, and it was not going to stop. We were very cold, and wet, and miserable. We began to wonder if there were only four islands, or if we were on the wrong bit of the river. Everything looked strange and different in the darkness.

We waited in silence for a moment, and then (Oh, how happy we were!) we heard Montmorency bark.

Harris looked very sad. In fact, he looked like a man who had had a lot of trouble. We asked him if anything had happened, and he said,' Swans!'

Just when we had lost all hope, I suddenly saw a strange light. It was over by the trees, on the opposite side of the river. I shouted as loudly as I could.

We continued to shout for about five minutes, and then we saw the lights of the boat. It was coming towards us slowly. We heard Harris's sleepy voice. He was asking where we were.

We had to scream and yell to wake him up again. At last we did wake him up, and we got into the boat.

We had left the boat near a swan's nest, and, soon after George and I had left, Mrs Swan came back. She started to shout at Harris. However, Harris managed to chase her away, and she went to fetch her husband. Harris said he had had quite a hard battle with these two swans. But he had fought bravely and, in the end, he defeated them.

Harris seemed very strange. It was more than tiredness. He brought the boat to our side of the river. He stopped, at a place where we could not get into the boat, and then immediately he fell asleep.

'You said eighteen before,'George said.

'How many swans did you say there were?'George asked.

Half an hour later they returned -- with eighteen more swans. There was another terrible battle. Harris said the swans had tried to pull him and Montmorency from the boat and drown them. But, once again, Harris fought bravely, for four hours, and he had killed them all. Then they had all swum away to die.

We never discovered what had really happened. We asked Harris about it the next morning, but he said, 'What swans?'And he seemed to think that George and I had been dreaming.

I slept well that night, although Harris did wake me up ten times or more. He was looking for his clothes. He seemed to be worrying about his clothes all night.

'No, I didn't,'Harris answered. 'I said twelve. Do you think I can't count?'

Oh, how wonderful it was to be in the boat again! We ate a very good supper, and then we thought we would have some whisky. But we could not find it. We asked Harris what he had done with it, but he did not seem to understand. The expression on Montmorency's face told us that he knew something, but he said nothing.

'Thirty-two,'Harris replied, sleepily.

The next time I woke up Harris said he could not find his shoes. And I can remember that once he pushed me over onto my side. 'Wherever can that umbrella be?'he was saying.

Twice he made George and me get up, because he wanted to see if we were lying on his trousers. George got quite angry the second time.

'Whatever do you want your trousers for? It's the middle of the night!'he cried. 'Why don't you lie down and go to sleep?'