lashed here
and there: Arabs, Chinkies, Japs, Malays, East Indians. Talk in every
lingo was on the air. Some hurried from the dock, making for a
lodging-house or for The Asiatics' Home. Some hurried into the dock,
with that impassive swiftness which gives no impression of haste, but
rather carries a touch of extreme languor. An old cargo tramp lay in a
far berth, and one caught the sound of rushing blocks, and a monotonous
voice wailing the Malayan chanty: "Love is kind to the least of men,
EEEE-_ah_, EEEE-_ah_!" Boats were loading up. Others were unloading.
Over all was the glare of arclights, and the flutter of honeyed tongues.

A few tugs were moored at the landing-stages. One or two men hung about
them, smoking, spitting. The anger of the Blackwall streets came to them
in throbbing blasts, for it was Saturday night, and closing time. Over
the great plain of London went up a great cry. Outside the doors of
every hostelry, in Piccadilly and Bermondsey, in Blackwall and Oxford
Street, were gathered bundles of hilarity, lingering near the scenes of
their recent splendours. A thousand sounds, now of revelry, now of
complaint, disturbed the brooding calm of the sky. A thousand impromptu
concerts were given, and a thousand insults grew precociously to blows.
A thousand old friendships were shattered, and a thousand new vows of
eternal comradeship and blood-brotherhood were registered. A thousand
wives were waiting, sullen and heavy-eyed, for a thousand jovial or
brutal mates; and a thousand beds received their occupants in full
harness, booted and hatted, as though the enemy were at the gates.
Everywhere strains of liquor-music surged up for the next thirty
minutes, finally to die away piecemeal as different roads received
different revellers.

In the hot, bilious dark of Blackwall, the tug swayed and jerked, and
the voices of the men seemed almost to shatter the night. But high above
them was the dirty main street, and there "The Galloping Horses" flared
and fluttered and roared. There seemed to be trouble.... One heard a
querulous voice: "I said TIME, din' I?" And another: "Well, let 'im
prove it. Let 'im 'it me, that's all!" From the tug you could see the
dust of the street rise in answering clouds to the assaults of many
feet. Then, quite suddenly, the wide swing-doors of the bar flapped
back. A golden gleam burst on the night and seemed to vomit a slithering
mass of men which writhed and rolled like an octopus. Then