A canal barge or monkey-boat (so called we presume from being very narrow in the loins) now came alongside, and having taken in her load of coals, the friendly cook of the ‘Nancy’ expressed an anxiety that Flashley should lose no opportunity of gaining all possible experience on the subject of coals, and the coal-trade generally, and therefore proposed to him a canal trip, having already spoken with the ‘captain of the barge’ on the subject. Before Flashley had time to object, or utter a demur, he was handed over the side, and pitched neatly on his legs on the after-part of the barge, close to a little crooked iron chimney, sticking blackly out of the deck, and sending forth a dense cloud of the dirtiest and most unsavoury smoke. The captain was standing on the ladder of the cabin, leaning on his great arms and elbows over the deck, and completely filling up the small square hatchway, so that all things being black alike, it seemed as if this brawny object were some live excrescence of the barge, or huge black mandrake whose roots were spread about beneath, and, perhaps, here and there, sending a speculative straggler through a chink into the water. The mandrake’s eyes smiled, and he showed a very irregular set of large white and yellow teeth, as he scrunched down through the small square hole to enable the young passenger and tourist to descend. Flashley, with a forlorn look up at the sky, and taking a good breath of fresh air to fortify him for what his nose already warned him he would have to encounter, managed to get down the four upright bars nailed close to the bulk-head, and called the ‘ladder.’ He found himself in a small aperture of no definite shape, and in which there was only room for one person to ‘turn’ at a time. Yet five living creatures were already there, and apparently enjoying themselves. There was the captain, and there was his wife, and there was a child in the wife’s right arm, and another of five years old packed against her left side, and there was the ‘crew’ of the barge, which consisted, for the present, of one boy of sixteen, of very stunted growth, and with one eye turning inwards to such a degree that sometimes the sight literally darted out, seeming to shoot beneath the bridge of his nose. They were all sitting, or rather hunched up, at ‘tea.’ The place had an overwhelming odour of coal-smoke, and tobacco smoke, and brown sugar, and onions, to say nothing of general ‘closeness,’ and the steam of a wet blanket-coat, which was lying in a heap to dry before the little iron stove. The door of this was open, and the fire shone brightly, and seemed to ‘_wink_’ at Flashley as he looked that way. ‘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.