While the old man was bowing and scraping himself out, Kit slipped into his hand all the change he had left from the pound the Captain had given him, and then hurried through his supper. He had devoted that evening to a long letter home, giving an account of the voyage and what he had seen in London. But now he had even a longer letter to write, and on a very different subject.
CHAPTER IX.
KIT INSPECTS LONDON.
THE unloading of a steamer in England, the young supercargo soon found, is not the rapid process that it is in America, though much cheaper. The workmen receive smaller pay and move more slowly, the machinery is not so modern, none of the facilities as good.
“This is about halfway between New York and the West Indies,” Kit was forced to conclude, “in the way they do work. It must be true, as I have often heard, that ‘New York is the quickest unloading port in the world, and the most expensive.’”
He tried at first to hurry the men up and so save money for his employers; but it was uphill work for one young American to change the customs of centuries, and he had to let things take their course. Even the agents, he noticed, were in no hurry. When the sugar was all unloaded, there was no new cargo ready to take its place, and the four or five days that might have sufficed to make the North Cape ready for sea again, expanded into several weeks. So in spite of himself Kit had a good deal of idle time while the ship lay at Gravesend—idle, that is, as far as his work was concerned; there were too many new things to be seen all around him, too many facts about London to be learned from the Captain’s books, for much of his time to be really unemployed. Frequently he had to go to the agents’ office in Fenchurch Street, and on those occasions whenever he had an hour or two to spare he took a “’bus” to some other part of the city, taking care to remain in the same one till it reached its destination and then return in it, for fear of losing himself.
One morning when there was no cargo to load and no prospect of any arriving, Captain Griffith suggested that they should go up together and have a look at the city.
“I speak of ‘the city’ in the same way as I should speak of it at home,” he added, “meaning the whole town. I suppose you have learned that in London the part they call ‘the city’ is a very small section where most of the financial business is done; so when a Londoner says he is going into the city, he means into that small and crowded part of the town. But I mean it in the larger sense, including the whole place, or as much of it as we have time to see.”
“Why, that will be fine, sir,” Kit replied. “I have an appointment for this morning with young Mr. Watkins, one of our agents’ clerks. He is going to show me something of London, and we will both enjoy it if you will go along.”
“Well, if you youngsters won’t think an old man in the road,” the Captain laughed, “I will go with you. I once knew London pretty well; but it is fifteen or eighteen years since I have seen much of it, and perhaps I will need a guide as much as you do.”