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.