The kaag was being towed in the direction of Haarlem by a team of horses on the canal-bank, but on deck the crew were making preparations to swing her side-boards down into the water and deploy her clever folding mast, so that they could hoist a sail or two. The horses faltered as they came to a section of pavement that was broken and blackened, and ridged with trails of lead that had flowed molten from Mr. Sluys's house, and spread across the paving-stones in glowing rivers that had divided and combined as they crept toward the bank. Finally the streams of molten lead had plunged gorgeously over the stone quay and dropped into the canal, where they'd flung up a column of steam that dwarfed and enveloped the pillar of smoke from Mr. Sluys's burning houses. By that time, of course, those who'd set the fire had long since disappeared. It was up to the drost to interrogate the very few witnesses and to figure out whether it had really been done by infuriated Orangers, taking revenge on Sluys for backing the French, or by arsonists in the pay of Mr. Sluys. Sluys had lost so much, so fast, in the recent crash of V.O.C. stock * that his only way of getting any liquidity would have been to set fire to everything he still owned and then make claims against those who'd been rash enough to sell him insurance. This morning – three days since the fire – salvagers in the pay of those insurers were busy with pry-bars and hoists, pulling congealed rivulets and puddles of lead from the canal.