There are many odd trades in the West India Dock Road, and none of them, it would seem, so profitable as the fleecing of sailors. But by a queer coincidence the callings mostly savor of the same painful process. They run to leather for the most part, and the manufacture of those articles de luxe which are chiefly composed of colored morocco and gum. There is also a trade in furs. Halfway down the West India Dock Road, where the shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers congregate, there is quite a large fur store, of which the window, clad in faded red, is adorned by a white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a flyblown newspaper, and a stuffed seagull with a singularly knowing squint.
There was once a name above the shop, but the owner of it, for reasons of his own, or so soon, perhaps, as he realized that he was in a country where no one wants to know your name, or cares about your business, had carelessly painted it out with a pot of black paint and a defective brush, which had last been used for red.
On each side of the shopwindow is a door, one leading to the warehouse and workshop at the back. Through this door there passes quite a respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn hither on coster carts from the remoter suburbs, passes in to this door to emerge from it later in neat wooden cases addressed to enterprising merchants in Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other northern cities from which tourists are in the habit of carrying home mementoes in the shape of the fur and feather of the country. There is also a small importation of American fur to be dressed and treated and re-despatched to the Siberian fur dealers from whom the American globetrotter prefers to buy. A number of unhealthy work-people—men, women, and ancient children—also use this door, entering by it in the morning, and only coming into the air again after dark. They have yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long companionship with fur has made them hirsute; for the men are unshaven, and the women’s heads are burdened with heavy coils of black hair.
The other door, which is little used, seems to be the entrance to the dwelling-house of the nameless foreigner. On the left-hand doorpost is nailed a small tin tablet, whereon are inscribed in the Russian character three words, which, being translated, read: “The Brothers of Liberty.” As no one of importance in the West India Dock Road reads the Russian characters, there is no harm done, or else some disappointment would necessarily be experienced by the passerby to think that anyone so nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain that hides the inner parts of the furrier’s store from vulgar gaze.
“That’s their lingo,” said Captain Cable to himself, with considerable emphasis, one dull winter afternoon when, after much study of the numbers over the shop doors, he finally came to a stand opposite the furrier’s shop.
He stepped back into the road to look up at the house, thereby imperilling his life amid the traffic. A costermonger taking cabbages from the Borough Market to Limehouse gave the captain a little piece of his mind in the choicest terms then current in his daily intercourse with man, and received in turn winged words of such a forcible and original nature as to send him thoughtfully eastward behind his cart.
“That’s their lingo, right enough,” said the captain, examining the tin tablet a second time. “That’s Polish, or I’m a Dutchman.”
He was, as a matter of fact, wrong, for it was Russian, but this was, nevertheless, the house he sought. He looked at the dingy building critically, shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting forward his high-crowned hat, he scratched his head with a grimace indicative of disappointment. It was not to come to such a house as this that he had put on what he called his “suit”; a coat and trousers of solid pilot-cloth designed to be worn as best in all climates and at all times. It was not in order to impress such people as must undoubtedly live behind those faded red curtains that he had unpacked from the stateroom locker his shore-going hat, high, and of fair, round shape, such as is only to be bought in the shadow of Limehouse steeple.
The house was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it. Captain Cable saw this. He was a man who studied weather and the outward signs of a man. He rang the bell all the louder, and stood squarely on the threshold until the door was opened by a dirty man in a dirty apron, who looked at him in lugubrious silence.
“Name of Cable,” said the captain, turning to expectorate on the pavement, after the manner of farsighted sailors who are about to find themselves on carpet. The man made a slight grimace, and craned forwards with an interrogative ear held ready for a repetition.
“Name of Cable,” repeated the captain. “Dirty!” he added, just by way of inviting his hearer’s attention, and adding that personal note without which even the shortest conversation is apt to lose interest.
This direct address seemed to have the desired effect, for the man stood aside.
“Heave ahead!” he said, pointing to an open door. For the only English he knew was the English they speak in the
