'God's bones!' Nathaniel Drinkwater swallowed the watered gin with a shudder of revulsion. His disgust was not entirely attributable to the loathsome drink: it had become his sole consolation in the weary week he had just passed. Apart from making the water palatable the gin was intended as an anodyne, pressed into service to combat the black depression of his spirits, but instead of soothing, it had had the effect of rousing a maddeningly futile anger. He pressed his face against the begrimed glass of the window, deriving a small comfort from its coolness on his flushed forehead and unshaven cheek. The first floor window commanded a view of the filthy alley below. From the grey overcast sky -- but making no impression upon the dirty glass -- a slanting rain drove down, turning the unpaved ginnel into a quagmire of runners and slime which gave off a foul stench. Opposite, across the narrow gutway between the smoke-blackened brick walls, a pie shop confronted him. 'God's bones,' Drinkwater swore again.

Never in all his long years of sea service had an attack of the megrims afflicted him so damnably; but never before had he been so idle, waiting, as he was, above a ship's chandler's store in an obscure and foetid alley off Wapping's Ratcliffe Highway. Waiting . And constantly nagging away at the back of his mind was the knowledge that he had so little time, that the summer was nearly past, had already passed, judging by the wind that drove the sleet and smoke back down the chimney pots of the surrounding huddled buildings.