‘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.