Page:Soullondonasurv00fordgoog.djvu/84

RV 67 (WORK IN LONDON) of fashionable watering places. They move, these barges, in squadrons in a continual and mazy slant, red sail cutting diagonally across red sail, with here and there a large rent, and here and there a white patch. They give the "character" to this road into London, to this river of toil. Their only rivals are the sludge boats, a fleet of large steamers owned by the County Council. These are running in a continuous string; they go swiftly down stream, low in the water, and showing all black. They come back empty, so high in the bows that a great streak of red shows from the keel upwards; they swing round in front of one or other of the sewage works, ready to take in another cargo to drop into the sea beyond the Nore as soon as the tide serves. The barges, however, carry coke, carry sand, carry gravel, and a hundred other things. Occasionally one loaded very high with a stack passes them all, looking for all the world like a man buried beneath a haycock; occasionally these, too, are passed by very gaily painted, astonishingly swift, racing barges, that thread the close traffic like brilliant shuttles, and roar and rustle through the water.

So at last, keeping out of the way of the sludge boats, out of the way of powder barges, of great steamers of the famous Lines, of swift fish carriers that raise an enormous wash, and of the Belle steamers that they detest most of all, the small flotillas come to the top of Tipcock Reach. Hitherto the factories have been scarce, mostly unsavoury and solitary. But a beacon rises up beyond the wharf of a powder factory 67