HARE RODE AT ANCHOR, LANTERNS a-blaze, before Wapping: a suburb crooked in an elbow of the Thames just downstream of the Tower. If Jeffreys had already boarded her, there was nothing they could do, short of hiring a pirate-ship to overhaul her when she reached blue water. But a few minutes' conversation with the watermen loitering round the Wapping riverfront told them that no passengers had been conveyed to that ship yet. Jeffreys must be waiting for something; but he would wait close by, within view of Hare, so that he could bolt if he had to. And he would choose a place where he could get strong drink, because he was a drunkard. That narrowed it down to some half a dozen taverns, unevenly spaced along the riverbank from the Tower of London down to Shadwell, mostly clustered around the stairs and docks that served as gate-ways ‘tween the Wet and the Dry worlds. Dawn was approaching, and any normal business ought to've been closed half a dozen hours ago. But these dockside taverns served an irregular clientele at irregular hours; they told time by the rise and fall of the tides, not by the comings and goings of the sun. And the night before had been as wild as any in England's history. No sane tavernkeeper would have his doors closed now.