fortunate French bee-master!

Loading and unloading, coming and going, lifting and lowering, shouting
and replying, swearing and retorting, creaking and jangling, shrieking
and bumping, cursing and chaffing, the noise and restlessness of men and
things were utterly bewildering. I had often heard of a Babel of sounds,
but I had never before heard anything so like what one might fancy it
must have been when that great crowd of workmen broke up, and left
building their tower, in a confounding of language and misunderstanding
of speech. For the men who went to and fro in these docks, each his own
way, jostling and yelling to each other, were men of all nations, and
the confusion was of tongues as well as of work. At one minute I found
myself standing next to a live Chinaman in a pigtail, who was staring as
hard as I at some swarthy supple-bodied sailors with eager faces, and
scant clothing wrapped tightly round them, chatting to each other in a
language as strange to the Chinaman as to me, their large lustrous eyes
returning our curiosity with interest, and contrasting strangely with
the tea-caddy countenance of my elbow neighbour. Then a turbaned Turk
went by, and then two grinning negroes, and there were lots of men who
looked more like Englishmen, but who spoke with other tongues, and
amongst those who loaded and unloaded in this busy place, which was once
of no importance, Irish brogue seemed the commonest language of all.

One thing made me hopeful--there were plenty of boys no bigger than
myself who were busy working, and therefore earning wages, and as I saw
several lads who were dressed in suits the very counterpart of my own, I
felt sure that my travelling companion had done me a good turn when he
rigged me out in slops. An incident that occurred in the afternoon made
me a little more doubtful about this.