"Now where is the disturbance located?"

Doeke's finger slid vaguely across the chart. "Well, here, maybe? I was on Prince Henry Quay-here, I would say. A dory, I thought, with flames spouting up, some black smoke too-quite a cloud."

They looked about in vain, some thirty minutes. Doeke was taken back to the shore, on the Singel, where he lived in an attic. "Pleasant duty," Doeke said formally, and the sailor cops said good night.

What could the disturbance have been? Lightning? There had been a thunderstorm earlier in the day. Some soft thunder, in the outskirts of the city. Warm summer weather- didn't that sometimes lead to sudden electricity bursting from low clouds? The sailor policemen didn't think so, this time. Destructive youth? Boys like to light matches. A floating box stuffed with burning paper? Or maybe a vision, after all? Doeke had been fairly active and had slept little for a few days. Extra hours of duty, long hours of study for his upcoming sergeant's exam. Add a few hours of serious drinking, the hurt of a recently broken engagement, a visit to a most attractive and most unhelpful whore-tensions not broken by proper relaxation-so what do you see? Fire on water?

The sailor cops wrote the unsubstantiated phenomenon in their report and a note was filed in the radio room of Municipal Headquarters. The night changed once again into day.

Waling Wiarda was up early and out for a walk-not on his own time, for Waling was working. A chief of the Department of Public Parks goes for walks in his line of duty, to check the growth of the city's living greenery. While walking, Waling recited a poem. In the cracks of rocks that form the quay walls were supposed to (oh, wild and wondrous glory… of flowers, splendid…) grow some extraordinarily tall mountain-ash berries, which were weakening the mortar.