onflict: the frivolous odour of fried sausage coyly
flirted with the solemn smell of dead smoke, and between them they bore
a bastard perfume of stale grease. Coffee-urns screamed and belched.
Cakes made the counter gay.

We stood for a moment, gazing, wondering. Then the blond-bearded giant
who had beckoned repeated his invitation; indeed, he reached a huge arm,
seized me, and set me on his knee. I lost all sense of ownership of my
face in the tangles of his beard. He hiccuped. He coughed. He rattled.
He sneezed. His forearms and fingers flew, as though repelling
multitudinous attacks. His face curled, and crinkled, and slipped, and
jumped suddenly straight again, and then vanished in infinite
corrugations. He seemed to be in the agony of a lost soul which seeks to
cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff.... Arms and lips
lashed the air about them, and at last the very lines of his body seemed
expressive of the state of a man who has explained himself forty-five
times, and is then politely asked to explain himself. For half an hour,
I suppose, I sat on his knee while he sneezed and roared and played
games with his vocal cords.

It was not until next morning that I learnt that he had been speaking
Norwegian and trying to ask me to have a cake. When I knew that I had
been in the lair of the Scandinavian seamen, I thrilled. When I learnt
that I had lost a cake, I felt sad.

It is a curious quarter, this Shadwell and St. George's: a street of
mission-halls for foreign sailors and of temperance restaurants, such as
that described, mostly for the Scandinavians, though there are many
shops catering for them still farther East. Sometimes you may hear a
long, savage roar, but there is no cause for alarm. It is only that the
great Mr. Jamrach, London's leading dealer in wild animals, has his
menagerie in this street.

The shop-fronts are lettered in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. Strange
provisions are found in the "general" shops, and quaintly carved goods
and long wooden pipes in other windows. Marine stores jostle one
another, shoulder to shoulder, and there is a rich smell of tar,
bilge-water, and the hold of a cargo tramp. Almost you expect to hear
the rattle of the windlass, as you stand in the badly lighted
establishment of Johann Dvensk, surrounded by ropes, old ship's iron,
bloodthirsty blades, canvas, blocks, and pulleys. Something in this
narrow space seizes you, and you feel that you must "Luff her!" or