smell like fish?' 'Oh, only a kind of sauce they make out of prawns. They bury them and then dig them up several weeks afterwards.' 'How absolutely horrible!' 'Quite wholesome, I believe. Come away from that!' he added to Flo, who was nosing at a basket of small gudgeon-like fish with spines on their gills. Li Yeik's shop faced the farther end of the bazaar. What Elizabeth had really wanted was to go straight back to the Club, but the European look of Li Yeik's shop-front -- it was piled with Lancashire-made cotton shirts and almost incredibly cheap German clocks -- comforted her somewhat after the barbarity of the bazaar. They were about to climb the steps when a slim youth of twenty, damnably dressed in a longyi , blue cricket blazer and bright yellow shoes, with his hair parted and greased 'Ingaleik fashion', detached himself from the crowd and came after them. He greeted Flory with a small awkward movement as though restraining himself from shikoing. 'What is it?' Flory said. 'Letter, sir.' He produced a grubby envelope. 'Would you excuse me?' Flory said to Elizabeth, opening the letter. It was from Ma Hla May -- or rather, it had been written for her and she had signed it with a cross -- and it demanded fifty rupees, in a vaguely menacing manner. Flory pulled the youth aside. 'You speak English? Tell Ma Hla May I'll see about this later. And tell her that if she tries blackmailing me