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"Lord Almighty! You had me proper fooled! You're a blinkin' artist, guv'nor!"

"So you think I'll pass muster in the Cauldron?"

"Cor blimey, yes-no one will look at you twice!"

"Jolly good! Then it just remains for us to arm ourselves and we'll be off, if you're agreeable?"

"Right ho, sir; right ho!"

Burton crossed to the bureau that stood against the wall between the two windows and, opening a drawer, pulled from it a brace of modern pistols. He handed one of the six-shooters to the giant cabbie.

"It's loaded, so be careful. And Monty, this is only to be used in the very last resort, is that understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"If you have to draw it, be careful where you point it and only pull the trigger if there's no other option."

"Right you are, guv'nor."

"Good. Let's be off, then. I'm afraid we'll have to pay one of your competitors to take us there."

"Don't worry about that," said Penniforth. "We cabbies have an under- standin' between ourselves. An' whatever chap takes us, I'll 'ave 'im arrange for me steam-horse to be towed away from outside your 'ouse, too."

They pushed their pistols into their belts, buttoned up their coats, and left the house.

THE CAULDRON

or nigh on five hours, Sir Richard Burton and Montague Penniforth had been trudging around the crowded streets, courts, alleys, and cul-de-sacs of Whitechapel with the fog churning around them and the unspeakable filth sticking to their boots.

The honeycomb of narrow, uneven passages, bordered by the most decrepit and crowded tenements in the city, was flowing with raw sewage and rubbish of every description, including occasional corpses. The stench was overpowering and both men had vomited more than once.

They passed tall houses-"rookeries"-mostly of wood, which slumped upon their own foundations as if tired of standing; houses whose gaping windows were devoid of glass and patched, instead, with paper or cloth or broken pieces of wood; windows from which slops and cracked chamber pots were emptied; from which defeated eyes gazed blankly.

Lines of rope stretched across the alleys, decorated with flea-ridden rags; clothes put out to be washed by the polluted rain, later to dry in the rancid air, but currently marinating in the toxic vapour.

Time and again the two men were approached by girls barely out of childhood, who materialised out of the fog with matted hair and bare feet, smeared with excrement up to their knees, covered only by a rough coat or a thin, torn dress or a man's shirt which hung loosely over their bones; who offered themselves for a few coppers; who lowered the price when refused; who begged and wheedled and finally cursed viciously when the men pushed past.

Time and again they were approached by boys and men in every variety of torn and filthy apparel, who demanded and bullied and threatened and finally, when the pistols appeared, spat and swore and sidled away.

Time and again they passed skeletal women sitting hunched in dark corners clutching tiny bundles to their breasts; poverty and starvation gnawing at them; too weak and hopeless even to raise their heads as the two men walked quietly by.

Burton, the author, the man who'd described in minute detail the character and practices of cultures far removed from his own, felt that he could never find the words to depict the utter squalor of the Cauldron. The dirt and decay, the putrescence and rot and garbage, the viciousness and violence, the despair and emptiness; it was far beyond anything he'd witnessed in the darkest depths of Africa, amid the so-called primitives.

Thus far tonight, the two men had drunk sour-tasting beer in four malodorous public houses. It was the fifth that delivered what they were looking for.

They were approaching Stepney when Burton mumbled, "There's another public house ahead. I have to get this foul taste out of my mouth. We'll take a gin or rum or something; anything, so long as it's not that pisswater they call ale."

The cabbie nodded wordlessly and stumbled on, his big feet squelching through the slime.

The pub-the