'Here we are!' said a strange voice.

Flashley looked earnestly into the stove.
He thought the voice came from the fire.
The coals certainly looked very glowing, and
shot out what a German or other imaginative
author would call significant sparks.

'Here we are!' said the voice from another
part of the cabin, and, turning in that direction,
Flashley found that it proceeded from
the 'crew,' who had contrived to stand up,
and was endeavouring to give a close
imitation of the 'clown,' on his first
appearance after transformation. This, by
the help of his odd eye, was very significant
indeed.

And here they were, no doubt, and here
they lived from day to day, and from night to
night; and a pretty wretched, dirty,
monotonous life it was. Having once got into a
canal, with the horse at his long tug, the
tediousness of the time was not easily to be
surpassed. From canal to river, and from
river to canal, there was scarcely any variety,
except in the passage through the locks, the
management of the rope in passing another
barge-horse on the tow-path, and the means
to be employed in taking the horse over a
bridge. The duty of driving the horse along
the tow-path, as may be conjectured, fell to
the lot of our young tourist. Once or
twice, 'concealed by the murky shades of
night,' as a certain novelist would express it,
he had ventured to mount the horse's back;
but the animal, not relishing this addition to
his work, always took care, when they passed
under a bridge, or near a wall, or hard
embankment, to scrape his rider's leg along the
side, so that very little good was got in that
way. And once, when Flashley had a 'holiday,'
and was allowed to walk up and down
the full length of the barge upon the top of
the coals, a sudden bend in the river brought
them close upon a very low wooden bridge,
just when he was at the wrong end of the
barge for making a dive to save his head.
Flashley ran along the top as fast as he could,
but the rascally horse seemed to quicken his
pace, under the captain's mischievous lash, so
that finding the shadow of the bridge running
at him before he could make his leap from the
top of the coals, he was obliged to save
himself from being violently knocked off, by
jumping hastily into the canal, to the infinite
amusement and delight of the captain, his
wife, and the 'crew.' The horse being
stopped, the captain came back and lugged
him out of the bulrushes just as he had got
thoroughly entangled, and immersed to the
chin; knee-deep in mud, and with frogs and
eels skeeling and striking out in all directions
around him.

After a week or ten days passed in this
delightful manner, Flashley found the barge
was again on the Thames, no longer towed by
a horse and rope, but by a little dirty steam-
tug. They stopped on meeting a lighter on
its way up with the tide, and Flashley being
told to step on board, was received by his
grim but good-natured companion and
instructor, the cook of the 'Nancy,' now going
up with a load to Bankside, and performing
the feat of managing two black oars of
enormous length and magnitude. They were
worked in large grooves in each side of the
lighter, one oar first receiving all the strength
of this stupendous lighterman (late cook) with
his feet firmly planted on a cross-beam in
front, so as to add to the mighty pull of his
arms, all the strength of his legs, as well as
all the weight of his body. Having made
this broad sweep and deep, he left the oar
lying along the groove, and went to the one
on the other side, with which he performed a
similar sweep.

'Here's a brig with all sails set, close upon
us!' cried Flashley.

'She'd best take care of herself;' said our
lighterman, as he went on deliberately to
complete his long pull and strong.

Bump came the brig's starboard bow
against the lighter; and instantly heeling
over with a lift and a lurch, the former reeled
away to leeward, a row of alarmed but more
enraged faces instantly appearing over the
bulwarks—those 'aft' with eyes flashing on
the lighterman, and those 'for'ard,' anxiously
looking over to see if the bows had been
stove in. A volley of anathemas followed our
lighterman; who, however, continued slowly
to rise and sink backward with his prodigious
pull, apparently not hearing a word, or even
aware of what had happened.

In this way they went up the river among
sailing-vessels of all kinds, and between the
merchants' 'forest of masts,' like some huge
antediluvian water-reptile deliberately
winding its way up a broad river between the
woods of a region unknown to man.

'But here's a steamer!' shouted Flashley.
—'We shall be run down, or she'll go slap
over us!'

The man at the wheel, however, knew
better. He had dealt with lightermen before
to-day. He therefore turned off the sharp
nose of the steamer, so as not merely to clear
it, but dexterously to send the 'swell' in a
long rolling swath up against the lighter,
over which it completely ran, leaving the
performer at the oars drenched up to the hips,
and carrying Flashley clean overboard. He
was swept away in the rolling wave, and
might have been drowned, had not a
coalheaver at one of the wharfs put off a skiff to
his rescue.

So now behold Flashley at work among
the wharfingers of Bankside.

Before the coals are put into the sack, they
undergo a process called 'screening.' This
consists in throwing them up against a
slanting sieve of iron wire, through which the
fine coal and coal-dust runs: all that falls on
the outer side of the screen is then sacked.
But many having found that the coals are
often broken still more by this process, to