## Chapter 89: You Understand Chinese?
The Thames barge swayed gently as Arthur leaned against the railing, taking a drag from his pipe. He looked up at the banks, seeing only a row of concrete sewage pipes relentlessly spewing tons of waste into the river.
The black water was like a pool of undiluted ink, coated with layers of thick tar. These chemical pollutants were almost entirely from the London Gas Light and Coke Company, headquartered in Westminster.
Of course, besides the tar, there were always strange things floating on the river.
Torn clothes, so dirty you couldn’t tell what they were originally, rusty knives of dubious origin, half-empty cosmetics and empty bottles of liquor.
Or, if you were unlucky, you might even encounter a rotting corpse, almost unrecognizable.
All kinds of decay-causing bacteria thrived here. Anyone with a sane mind wouldn’t want to linger here for a moment.
Yet, the Thames remained a constant stream of traffic. Besides the sailors who had to pass through here to unload cargo at London’s various docks, the filthy Thames also supported many “river scavengers” who made a living by scavenging for scraps.
Even though the Thames was dirty and stinking, these poor souls couldn’t leave it.
Their livelihood depended on finding some valuables from the corpses or picking up some scrap metal that could be sold for recycling.
Across the river bank, through the hazy weather, Arthur could see the silhouette of the Tower of London in the distance.
As a defensive fortress built during the reign of William the Conqueror, the Tower of London had been used for various purposes throughout its long history: a castle, a royal palace, a treasury, a gunpowder store, a mint, and, of course, most famously, a prison.
The most famous prisoner held in the Tower was Queen Elizabeth I, the virgin queen who never married.
She was accused of treason due to the suspicion of her sister, Mary I.
Luckily, Mary I had no children, so she eventually named Elizabeth as her heir.
Elizabeth I therefore became the only prisoner of treason to walk out of the Tower alive.
Others weren’t so lucky.
The big names who died here included at least nine princes, queens, and archbishops, at least 33 dukes, marquises, and earls, and dozens of barons and knights.
The Tower of London wasn’t always just for nobles. It treated nobles and commoners equally when it came to killing people.
It’s just that the commoners’ deaths were more mundane. They usually just went to the gallows.
To highlight the nobility’s distinctiveness, male nobles had to be beheaded with a broadaxe, while female nobles had to be burned at the stake.
But the nobles clearly didn’t like this special treatment.
Because during executions, there had been more than one instance where the executioner’s axe was too dull to deliver a fatal blow.
To cooperate with the executioner’s beheading, nobles sometimes even spent the night before the execution figuring out what posture would make it easier for the executioner to exert force.
In the matter of how to kill people, the British nobility rarely envied their French neighbors across the channel.
Compared to being chopped to death by an axe, the semi-mechanized guillotine was indeed a great invention.
And the improved guillotine designed and personally tested by King Louis XVI was an ingenious invention that was stable and reliable.
Anything like this would make any British noble yell “Brilliant!”
Jokes aside, the reputation of the Tower Hamlets district where the Tower of London was located was as bad as the Tower itself.
Even in the chaotic East End of London, Tower Hamlets was a heavyweight.
Looking at the areas under its jurisdiction, you could tell what kind of place it was: Whitechapel, Ratcliff, Hackney, Bethnal Green, and the West India Docks, crowded with boisterous sailors from around the world.
Male workers were concentrated in shipyards, repair yards, foundries, cooperages, sailcloth factories, rope and pulley factories, while women and children worked in large numbers in the silk weaving industry, including clothing, lace, and shoemaking.
But no matter how they were classified, these industries all boiled down to one conclusion: they were labor-intensive.
These factories, coupled with the busy docks in all seasons, naturally gave birth to a large number of cheap taverns and a thriving prostitution industry.
In the daily reports of Scotland Yard, these industries represented high population mobility and therefore high crime rates.
Although Arthur often worried about the crime situation in Greenwich, whenever he looked up at the Tower Hamlets district just across the river, his complaints would be swallowed back down.
The security situation here was so bad that Scotland Yard had to issue warnings to visiting journalists.
If reporters wanted to visit chaotic parishes like Whitechapel, they had to apply to Scotland Yard in advance and be accompanied by at least two police officers.
In this area east of the Tower of London, which was originally used to execute pirates and sea wanderers, over 300,000 London poor people had gathered, and it was still siphoning off the British poor areas at a rate of over 10% per year.
The destination they were visiting today was also in an area under Tower Hamlets – Cambridgeshire.
As soon as they stepped off the barge, they could feel the heat of the dock.
It was June, the season when wool from South Africa and South America arrived in London. Everywhere on the dock, you could see sweating porters and groups of sailors shouting about going ashore to have some fun.
According to the information provided by the counterfeit merchant, Judd Martin, the criminal organization they were looking for, “The Little Brothers of Cambridgeshire,” was mixed in with this throng of people.
And finding them was actually easy.
Arthur winked at Tom and the other plainclothes police officers from Greenwich immediately understood. They dispersed into the bustling crowd.
Seeing everyone hidden, Arthur calmly unbuttoned his coat, revealing the blue and white sailor’s uniform underneath. He then checked the weapons hidden in his coat, including a short sword and a flintlock pistol.
Only after making sure everything was in order did Arthur take out a wide-brimmed sailor’s cap from his pocket and put it on his head.
He found a busy intersection, leaned against a red brick wall, and took out the gin bottle from his pocket and took two sips.
After two sips, Arthur was slightly tipsy, his cheeks flushed.
It was lunchtime for the factories, and many female workers from nearby textile factories rushed to the street vendors, scrambling to buy freshly baked lunch.
It was called lunch, but it was really just some fast food. Fish and chips were the best-selling item.
First, because it was cheap, and second, because it was easy and efficient to make.
After all, female workers usually only had fifteen to twenty minutes of break time. They had to finish their lunch as quickly as possible.
Otherwise, if they didn’t get back to the factory to work on time, they might lose their wages for the day.
As the saying goes, if you don’t do it, there are others who will. The East End of London lacked everything except labor.
The arrival of the female workers instantly drove the sailors, who hadn’t seen a woman in months, into a frenzy. They whistled at the ladies frivolously, occasionally interspersed with some vulgar remarks.
More experienced sailors had already started to strike up deals with the girls they found attractive.
The female workers were used to this scene. After all, this kind of situation happened almost every day at the docks. It was impossible to avoid it.
Arthur wanted to whistle like the sailors, but his skills were too crude. Not only did he fail to pique the ladies’ interest, but he also drew laughter from the sailors nearby.
Based on Arthur’s shallow understanding of linguistics, the sailors’ laughter included at least Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and authentic American village-逼 English.
This was enough to demonstrate the diversity of British sailor culture. In the face of the sailors’ laughter, Arthur retaliated mercilessly.
He gave the sailors the middle finger and said in a clear voice: “Laugh at your mother! Idiot!”
Agareus, who had been lurking near the fish and chips stall, ready to steal something, turned his head towards Arthur when he heard this.
The Red Devil exclaimed: “Damn it! Arthur, you understand Chinese?”
(To be continued)