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.