In this way the Resurrection Man, the Buffer, and Moll Wicks amused themselves until nearly eleven o'clock, when, just as they were thinking of retiring for the night,—Tidkins to his bed in the after cabin where they were then seated, and the other two to their berth in the cuddy forward,—the lighter was suddenly shaken from one end to the other by some heavy object which bumped violently against it. CHAPTER CLXVII. AN ARRIVAL AT THE WHARF. The collision was so powerful that the Buffer's wife was thrown from her seat; and every plank in the _Fairy_ oscillated with a crashing sound. The Buffer and the Resurrection Man rushed upon the deck. A single glance enabled them to ascertain the cause of the sudden alarm. A lighter, nearly as large as the _Fairy_, and heavily laden, had been so clumsily brought in against the barges moored off the wharf, that it came with the whole weight of its broad-side upon the _Fairy_. "Now then, stupids!" ejaculated the Buffer, applying this complimentary epithet to the two men who were on the deck of the lighter which was putting in. "Hope we haven't hurt you, friends," exclaimed one of the individuals thus addressed. "More harm might have been done," answered the Buffer. "Who are you?" "The _Blossom_," was the reply. "Where d'ye come from?" demanded Wicks. "Oh! up above bridge," cried the man, speaking in a surly and evasive manner. "Here—just catch hold of this rope, will you—and let us lay alongside of you." "No—no," shouted the Buffer. "You'd better drop astern of us, and moor alongside that chalk barge." "Well, so we will," said the man. While the _Blossom_ was executing this manœuvre, which it did in a most clumsy manner, as if the two men that worked her had never been entrusted with the care of a lighter before, the Buffer turned towards the Resurrection Man, and said in a whisper, "We must remain outside all the barges, 'cause of having room to run our boat alongside the _Fairy_ and get the things on board easy, when we come back from the expedition down to the _Lady Anne_." "To be sure," answered the Resurrection Man. "You did quite right to make those lubbers get lower down. I'm pleased with you, Jack; and now I see that I can let you be spokesman on all such occasions without any fear that you'll commit yourself." "Why, if you want to keep in the back-ground as much as possible, Tony," replied the Buffer, "it's much better to trust these little things to me. But, I say—I think there's something queer about them chaps that have just put in here." "So do I, Jack," said Tidkins. "They certainly know no more about managing a lighter than you and I did when we first took to it." "Yes—but we had a regular man to help us at the beginning," observed the Buffer. "So we had. And I precious soon sent him about his business when he had taught us our own."