The episode plays upon relativity, simultaneity, and conjunction. Upon a high ridge of St. Helena, Mason wanders as he wonders whether Dixon has landed safely on the Cape and what he might be about at that minute. Dixon, it turns out, is spending a large amount of time avoiding the consequences of the Vroom daughters' fascination with Mason, who, rumors in town have it, became involved with all of the daughters, the mother, and a slave during his stay on the Cape. Dixon is able to stop Cornelius Vroom from shooting him as a substitute for Mason, and the two spend an evening at The World's End, Vroom's local watering hole. There, Dixon makes first-hand observations on the debauchery that pervades the Dutch of the Cape and glimpses the consequences for the colony's black populace. He carries a drunken Cornelius home and is warned by the daughter Gret to hide the clock he has brought with him because of the contemporary fascination and paranoia regarding the rigors of time and the workings of mechanical clocks.