Chapter 90: Do you know Chinese?

Chapter 90 – You Know Chinese?

On the barge on the Thames, Arthur leaned on the edge of the railing and smoked a cigarette to himself, looking up at both banks, all he could see was a concrete sewage pipe relentlessly discharging tons of domestic sewage into the river.

The dark river looked like a puddle of thick ink, with layer after layer of sticky tar floating on the surface, almost all of these chemical pollutants coming from the Westminster-based London Gaslight and Coke Company.

Of course, apart from the tar, there are still a few novelties to be seen on the river.

Dirty, unrecognizable rags, rusty knives of dubious origin, or half-used bottles of cosmetics and alcohol.

Or, if you’re unlucky, you might even come across a corpse so decomposed that it’s almost impossible to recognize its original identity.

All sorts of rotting bacteria thrive here, and no one in their right mind would like to spend more than a few moments here.

But the Thames still flows daily, and in addition to the sailors who have to pass through to unload their cargo at the London docks, the dirty Thames also supports many ‘river scavengers’ who salvage scrap for a living.

Even though the Thames was dirty and putrid, these poor people could not live without it.

Their day-to-day livelihoods depended on finding a bit of property from a corpse, or picking up some scrap that could be resold for recycling.

Across the riverbank, Arthur could see the Tower of London standing in the distance through the foggy weather.

As a defensive fortress built during the reign of William I, the Tower of London has been used many times in its long history as a castle, a palace, a treasure house, a gunpowder magazine, a mint, and of course, it’s most famous function is to serve as a prison.

There is no more famous criminal to have been imprisoned in the Tower of London than the unmarried Virgin Queen Elizabeth I. The Tower of London is the most famous prison in the world, and it is the most famous prison in the world.

She was convicted of treason because of suspicion from her sister, Mary I. She was also convicted of treason.

Fortunately, however, since Mary I had no heirs, Elizabeth was eventually named as her heir.

Elizabeth I thus became the only prisoner of treason so far to walk out of the Tower of London alive.

Others who were imprisoned here were not as lucky as she was.

The big names who died here include at least nine princes, queens, and archbishops, at least 33 dukes, marquises, and earls, in addition to dozens of barons and knights and other lower-ranking nobles.

And the Tower of London wasn’t always just for the nobility; it treated nobles and commoners alike when it came to executing people.

Only the death of commoners is more unusual, they usually can only go to the gallows.

To emphasize the nobility’s distinction, male noblemen were decapitated with a long axe and female noblemen were burned at the stake.

But the nobles apparently didn’t like this special treatment very much.

Because in the process of execution, there has been more than once due to the executioner’s axe is too blunt, so that the end of not a blow to death.

In order to cooperate with the executioner’s beheading action, sometimes the nobles would even keep thinking about what position to use in order to make it easier for the executioner to use his power the night before the execution.

In the matter of how to get people killed, the British nobles rarely envied the neighboring France across the channel.

The semi-mechanized guillotine was a great invention compared to the axe.

The improved guillotine, designed and accepted by King Louis XVI himself, was a stable and reliable idea of genius.

This is the kind of thing that any English aristocrat would have to shout “Brilliant” about!

Jokes aside, the Tower of London is located in the region of Tauernhämlechts, the reputation of the Tower of London is as bad as the Tower of London.

Even in the chaotic East End of London, Tauerhamletts could be called a heavyweight.

Just look at the area under it to get an idea of what kind of territory it really is, with Whitechapel, Ratcliffe, Hackney, Bethnal Green and the West India Docks packed with rowdy sailors from all over the world.

Male workers were concentrated in the shipyards, ship repairers, foundries, barrel factories, canvas factories, rope making and pulley factories, while females and child laborers were heavily employed in the silk weaving industries such as garment, lace and shoe making.

But regardless of the typology, none of these industries escaped one summary – they were all labor-intensive.

These factories, combined with the busy docks, naturally gave rise to a large number of cheap taverns and a thriving prostitution industry. In Scotland Yard’s daily reports, these industries represent the high mobility of the population and the resulting high crime rate.

Although Arthur also often fretted about the crime situation in Greenwich, but every time he looked up at the district of Tauernhamletts, which was just across the river, this kind of whining would be swallowed back into his stomach.

The law and order situation here was even so bad that Scotland Yard had to issue a warning to news reporters visiting the area.

If journalists wanted to visit a chaotic parish such as Whitechapel, they had to apply to Scotland Yard in advance and be accompanied by at least two police officers before entering the area.

The area east of the Tower of London, where pirates and sea wanderers were originally hanged, is now home to more than 300,000 of London’s poor and is still siphoning off poverty-stricken areas of the UK at a rate of more than ten percent a year.

And the destination that Arthur and his team are going to visit today is also one of the areas under the jurisdiction of Tauer Hamlets – Cambridgeshires.

They had just stepped off the barge when they could feel the fire coming off the docks.

It was June, the season when South African and South American wool arrives in London, and there were sweaty laborers everywhere on the docks, as well as groups of sailors shouting to go ashore to have fun.

According to the information provided by Judd Martin, a counterfeiting businessman, the criminal organization they were looking for, ‘Cambridge’s Little Brothers’, was in the midst of this sea of people.

And finding these people was actually quite easy to say the least.

Arthur winked at Tom and the others, and those plainclothes Greenwich Borough police officers who had accompanied him instantly understood and dispersed into the bustling crowd in all directions.

And Arthur, seeing that the crowd had taken cover, then unhurriedly opened his overcoat, revealing the blue and white sailor’s uniform that was covered underneath, and examined the short knives and flintlock pistols and other weapons that were hidden inside the coat.

Only after making sure that everything was in order did Arthur pull a wide-brimmed sailor’s cap from his pocket and fasten it on top of his head.

He found a crowded intersection, leaned against the red brick wall, and took out the gin jug in his pocket to take a couple of swigs.

After two gulps, Arthur was slightly drunk and his cheeks were covered in a blush.

At this time was the factory’s lunch break, many female workers from the nearby textile factories hurriedly ran to the mobile stalls on both sides of the road and began to snatch up the freshly baked lunch.

Lunch, in fact, is some fast food, fish and chips is one of the best-selling goods.

One is because they are cheap, and the other is because they are simple and efficient to make.

After all, female workers usually only have fifteen to twenty minutes of break time, and they have to fix their lunch as soon as possible.

Otherwise, if they don’t make it back to the factory in time to work, they will probably lose their money for the day.

As the saying goes, if you don’t do it, someone else will. The East End of London has a shortage of everything but labor.

The arrival of the women workers instantly sent the sailors, who had not seen a woman for months, into a frenzy, whistling flippantly at the ladies, interspersed with a few dirty words.

The more experienced sailors, on the other hand, had already begun to find girls who looked good to them and started talking business.

The female workers were not surprised by such scenes, after all, such a situation is almost every day in the dock, it is impossible to avoid it.

Arthur also tried to whistle like the sailors, but his skills were too rough, not only failed to arouse the interest of the ladies, but also attracted the ridicule of the sailors.

With Arthur’s shallow understanding of linguistics, the sailors’ words of derision included at least Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and authentic American village English.

This is enough to illustrate the cultural diversity of British sailors, and in the face of the sailors’ ridicule, Arthur also mercilessly hit back.

He rushed at the sailors to compare a middle finger, the word pronounced: “Laugh at your mother? Dumb ass!”

Agares, who had originally been guarding the fried fish stand and was ready to sneak in and take something, couldn’t help but twist his head to look at Arthur when he heard this.

The Red Devil exclaimed, “Fuck! Arthur, you know Chinese?”

(End of chapter)