NOW D R. W ATERHOUSE WAS STANDING on the King's Privy Stairs: a rude wooden platform clinging to a sheer vertical wall of limestone blocks that plunged straight into the Thames. All of the Palace buildings that fronted on the river were built this way, so as he gazed downriver, keeping watch for the boat that carried the chirurgeons, he found himself sighting down a long, continuous, if somewhat motley wall, interrupted by the occasional window or mock bastion. Three hundred feet downstream, a dock was thrust out into the river, and several intrepid watermen were walking to and fro on it in the lock-kneed gait of men trying to avoid freezing to death. Their boats were tied up alongside, awaiting passengers, but the hour was late, the weather cold, the King was dying, and no Londoners were availing themselves of the old right-of-way that ran through the Palace.