“I had quite forgotten about it!” exclaimed Sir Christopher Wren. “I am indebted to you, Daniel. It is in the nature of building-projects, you know, that one gets a thing ninety-nine percent finished, then drifts away. Quite right of you to call this to my attention.”

By the time he had reached the end of this sentence, the drain had ceased to exist. The masons had brought with them a length of wrist-thick lead pipe, which they thrust down the tunnel, then buried in a wheelbarrow-avalanche of mixed mortar and rubble. The head of the pipe was stomped down until it was flush with the floor, and then the eldest of the masons set about finish-work, arranging a few small flat paving-stones around the orifice to cover up the rubble fill beneath.

At the other end of the room, Anderton’s men were stacking the hat-boxes into barrels. These were unfinished; the staves at the top were splayed apart, restrained by temporary hoops. A groove had been carved around their inner surfaces, near the ends, to accept the end-pieces. Each barrel was tall enough to accommodate a stack of half a dozen hat-boxes; more wood-shavings were dumped in around these, so they would not rattle around, and then the end-pieces were set in loose. In this state the barrels were dragged up stairs and out into the court behind the church, which communicated with a bigger court out back of Salters’ Hall: a place where no sight was more unremarkable than a huddle of barrels ready to be finished.

By day’s end, all of the barrels had been conveyed to the workshop of Mr. Anderton, and his coopers had bent the staves inward to imprison the end-pieces, and put on the permanent hoops.

Daniel was tired, and wanted to call it a day, but he could not bring himself to leave the cooperage until the last of the hat-boxes had been sealed up within the last of the barrels. He made himself at home in a corner of Anderton’s shop, stimulating himself as needed with coffee or tobacco, until the job was done. The barrels were then rolled down to Three Cranes and entrusted to a shipping-company; the destination marked on each one of them was LEIBNIZ-HAUS HANOVER. After all the care and bother that the Solomonic Gold had occasioned during its eventful passage from the Solomon Islands to the Palace of the Viceroy in Mexico, to its theft before Bonanza, to Cairo and Malabar and its many travels on or in the hull of Minerva, it felt very strange to turn one’s back on it and walk away, leaving it stacked out in the open on a wharf. But now, disguised as salt cod and placed in the care of a reputable shipping-agent, it was probably safer than it had ever been.

DANIEL HAD FEARED going back to Crane Court yesterday evening for the reason that Isaac would probably find him there and belabor him, and lambaste him, and browbeat him, and altogether make him feel bad. So he had fetched on the notion of requesting permission to come aboard Minerva, which was more convenient to the Three Cranes, and more hospitable. For weeks the management of that fair ship had been urging him to pay them a call, and for weeks he had been finding excuses not to. They were delighted when Daniel’s water-taxi hove up alongside shortly before midnight, and gave him too much to drink and then bedded him down in his old cabin.

When he woke up, he knew in his bones that he had slept for a very, very long time-probably owing to his inexpressible relief at having rid himself of the Solomonic Gold.

But he also knew that he could have slept much longer if not for all of the crashing and cursing.

He pulled on-with some reluctance-the crusty duds he had worn the day before. It felt like they were wearing him now. A strange man flung his cabin-door open without thinking to knock. Daniel was just in the act of buckling his shoe. He and the intruder studied each other, mutually shocked. The other was young, well-dressed, and properly brought up-mortified, therefore, that he had disturbed an old man at his levee. Why, then, was he here? The answer was suggested by the silver-greyhound badge.

“Sir! I do beg your pardon. But, er…”

“By the King’s command, you must search this cabin?” Daniel guessed.

“Yes, sir. That’s right.”

“For…what, if I may ask? Sleepy old men? Here’s one.”

“No, sir, beg pardon…”

“If you will only tell me what you have been ordered to search for, then perhaps I can assist you.”

“It’s gold, sir. Contraband gold.”

“Ah,” Daniel said, “I’m afraid the only gold in this chamber is this ring on my finger.” Daniel slipped it off and held it up. “Will you be confiscating it, then?”

Now the King’s Messenger was downright embarrassed. “Oh, no, sir, of course not, that is not the sort of thing we are looking for at all. And I really am terribly sorry to be disturbing you. But if you could only…well…”

“Get out of the way, so that you could give this cabin a thorough search? My good man, I was just on my way out!” Daniel said, and after slipping the ring back on to his finger he raised his eyebrows at the Messenger, pushed himself to his feet, and got out.

He found Dappa above, on the poop deck, sighting through a prospective-glass toward the Tower of London. Last night Daniel had reached Minerva without getting a clear notion of where she was situated in the Pool. Now that the sun was up, he was struck by how near she was to the Tower: practically within shouting-distance.

He knew better than to startle Dappa by speaking: this was bad etiquette, when the other chap’s attention was fixed on something far away. And he did not bother inquiring after van Hoek. The Captain’s whereabouts were obvious, for he never let off cursing in Dutch, Sabir, and all other tongues at his command, as he followed the King’s Messengers about his ship.

“It could have been worse,” Dappa said, after an especially bracing out-burst of van Hoekian execration burgeoned from an open hatch. “We are light-laden just now, and there is little difficulty in making a thorough search. A fortnight from now we’d have been laden to the scuppers and it would have been awkward.” He withdrew the glass from his eye and squinted at Daniel. “They are scratching our guns.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Someone important has fallen under the spell of a phant’sy that this magic gold might have been cast into the form of a gun, and painted black, as a way of smuggling it out, and so they have scratched each and every one of our guns with an awl, to be sure they are made of brass.”

“Incredible.”

“There are those among our crew who look on you, now, as bad luck.”

“Ah. I see. Because the first time I came aboard, it led to being assaulted by Blackbeard. And now this.”

“Yes, Doc.”

“Since they are so superstitious,” Daniel said, “perhaps they have heard the saying, ‘Third time’s a charm.’ ”

“What do you have in mind?” Dappa asked, and then could not help smiling.

“I gather from what you said that a voyage is in the offing?”

“We’ll take on some cargo here. Then to Plymouth.”

“Really!”

“When we set you ashore there, ten months ago, we chanced to embark on a little venture that is still playing out. At any rate, we must needs put in there. Then south to Oporto. Then a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean is contemplated, in balmier latitudes than these.”

“And then back to London in the spring-time?”

“We have had quite enough of London, thank you! No,” Dappa said, and laughed. “We go the other way round. Enoch Root has been pestering us to take him to the Islands of Solomon…”

“But those are halfway around the world from Boston!”

“We know where they are,” said Dappa. “They are on our way, though.”

“On your way to where?!”