t
I think they must all be in for some competition, and are making notes
about their scores; one man I watched had obviously just beaten the
record for halibut-recovery. He recovered so many in about a minute
that the tops of his boots were just beginning to show. When he had
done that he made such long notes in his book about it that most of
the halibut slid on to the floor again while he was doing it. Then he
began all over again. But I expect he won the prize.

Meanwhile about a million fish-porters are dashing up and down the
narrow avenues between the fish-stalls, porting millions of boxes of
fish. Nearly all of them, I am glad to say, have been in the army or
have had a relative in the army; for they are nearly all wearing the
full uniform of a company cook, which needs no description. On their
heads they have a kind of india-rubber hat, and on the india-rubber
hat they have a large box of fish weighing about six stone--six
_stone_, I tell you. This box they handle as if it was a box of
cigars. They pick it up with a careless gesture; they carry it as
if it was a slightly uncomfortable hat, and they throw it down with
another careless gesture, usually on to another box of fish; this
explains why so many of one's herrings appear to have been maimed at
sea.

When they have finished throwing the boxes about they too take out a
note-book and make notes about it all. This, it seems, is to make
sure that they are paid something for throwing each box about. I don't
blame them. It must be a hard life. Yet if I thought I could pick up
six stone of salmon and plaice and throw it about I should sign on at
Billingsgate at once. It is true they start work about five; but they
stop work, it seems, about ten, and they earn a pound and over for
that. Then they can go home. Most of them, I imagine, are stockbrokers
during the rest of the day.

And they are a refined and gentlemanly body of men. I hope the old
legend that the fish-porter of Billingsgate expresses himself in
terms too forcible for the ordinary man is now exploded; for it is a
slander. In fact it is a slander to call him a "porter;" at least in
these days I suppose it is libellous to connect a man falsely with
the N.U.R., if only by verbal implication. But, however that may be,
I here assert that the Billingsgate fish-porter is a comparatively
smooth and courteous personage, and, considering his constant
association with fish in bulk, I think it is wonderful.