"By jove," I said, "that's a pretty loud fish. What is it?"
"I don't smell anything," said the owner.
We discussed smell minutely, and I discovered that his life in Billingsgate had made him immune from fishy smells. How wonderful Nature is! Only when he returns from his holiday is he conscious of a little something in the air.
Billingsgate is perhaps the most libelled spot in London. Fifty years ago you had to wax your ears. The language was awful. To-day the Billingsgate fish porters are as polite and charming as we all are.
They are the backbone of Billingsgate, for this market is worked on the most primitive system of hard transport. The Genoese galleys which in the Middle Ages anchored near by were unloaded in exactly the same way. So were Pharaoh's galleys, and Cæsar's. These men, wearing queer-shaped leather helmets rather like stunted Burmese pagodas, carry all the fish in crates on their heads. When a man's neck "sets," as they call it, he can carry sixteen stone on his head. They do it every day and all day.
"Mind your back, please!" say the fish porters of Billingsgate.
"Shove over the hammer—if you don't mind, Jack!" I heard one say.
"Certainly!" replied Jack.
So much for that.
* * *