About noon I cook some hot dogs and eat them, and drink some pop; the alembic is boiling slow just like it oughta and making a very unusual smell. The color is a deep red, with various elements swirling around in it like tealeaves. I think of taking a swim but decide against it; I read some science magazines while the elixir of youth is simmering away, and presently I get sleepy and doze off. Then I wake up again and refill the gasoline torch, cook some more hot dogs and eat them. Around that time--it is near sundown--I hear a booming noise. I look out through the trees, and there is that motor-yacht that belongs to Mr. Vachti that stopped to ask if I needed rescuin' the day I was turning mandrake-root to ash. It is a quarter of a mile away, maybe less; I see Mr. Vachti talking to one of his tough-looking crew, and I see the Prof sitting in a deck-chair with a sort of thick fog of gloom around him, and I see old Jode nervous taking a drink from a steward and putting it hasty to his mouth. I can't figure it. It ain't the schedule Jode told me. I watch the yacht, and it curves around the end of the island. Then I don't feel so good; there is a house on the island, but it is always shut up. I think it over, uneasy, and make sure my alembic is boiling okay--it is kinda bluish, now, and the smell is different and still more unusual--so I sneak careful off through the woods, and presently I get to where I can see. The yacht has anchored and a boat is pulling ashore. I go back to my boat and fret awhile; then I hear the yacht heading back toward Las Lagunas. I feel relieved. Around eight o'clock that night my flashlight shows me that the stuff in the alembic has turned green. It stinks something fierce, but this is the regular change that Hermes Trismigestus says ought to occur, so I feel pretty good. I drink some more pop and try to read by the flashlight, but it ain't so easy. So I just lay around. It's hard work keeping awake with nothing but the sound of the waves and the night-wind in the trees to listen to; I wish I'd thought to bring along a portable radio, but I didn't. So I take a swim, cook some more hot dogs and offer one to the old pooch. He eats it uninterested and lays down again. At one o'clock in the middle of the night by my wristwatch, the stuff in the alembic is pale yellow and there ain't much of it. Maybe half a cup-full. And it's funny, but with all the junk I put in there what's left is clear liquid. Exactly like the alchemy book says. I know that natron--which is a sodium carbonate--hadn't oughta boil away like that, nor orpiment either. And the mandrake ashes ought to stay as a sludge. But they ain't. I guess there was some gaseous metal compounds formed--like uranium hexifluoride--and they boil off. But I can't swear to that explanation. I do what the alchemists said they did, and I get what they said they got.