So, concentrating his brain upon the necessary deed, he began pacing up and down. At the twentieth turn he walked toward the bucket and stopped suddenly, livid as death, his eyes fixed stupidly upon his hands. In his right hand he held a stick, a little, pliable bamboo stick. He tried to remember picking it up; he could not. The act had been not of the will, of the will that was fighting for mastery; it had been forced by that other Power, that Power which possessed his nerves, his bones, his flesh, the Power he was seeking to kill. "I will begin again," he muttered. At the tenth turn he stopped short, and a cold sweat welled up upon his body. He had another stick in his hand. And then, slowly, haltingly, but irresistibly, he approached the bucket. With somnambulant rigidity he placed the stick in the viscous stuff and slowly rotated it once, as if tentatively; then once more, determinedly; then again, with a sort of rage. The heavy fluid followed the stick, turned on itself faster and faster. A little whirlpool formed in the center. Burke's eyes fixed themselves upon it, and silently the little whirlpool sucked down all that was strong in him. The stick scraped along the sides of the bucket; the liquid circled swiftly. In a minute, in the depression at the center, a black spot formed. The stick turned faster. The black spot grew; finally it was a little round ball that sank to the bottom. The stick whirled around madly. The little ball enlarged. From all sides the like molecules rushed to it, rounding it out as a snowball that is rolled downhill. At last it was like a small cannon-ball. Burke bared his arms, plunged them into the bucket, drew out the black, pitchy solid and threw it overboard. He rushed back, and his hollowed hand scooped up a few drops of the now-white liquid and slapped it to his lips. The taste drove him mad, and, dropping down on hands and knees like a dog, he put his lips to the side of the bucket and drew in long gulpfuls. A little later the natives were all gathered at the stern, looking with wonder upon the strange actions of the Americano. He was squatting on deck, the bucket between his knees. At close intervals he raised it to his lips and poured the awful contents down his throat. Then he hugged the bucket, sobbing softly like a child being consoled after suffering, and between his laughs and his tears he gurgled to himself an endless story, full of tearful self-compassion and sobbing, endearing terms, long and soft and meaningless as the croon of a lonely babe. Toward night he fell into a heavy stupor and lay there on his back, his face to the moonlight, and the tears drying on his cheeks. In the morning, when the doctor's launch churned out of the river, it had in tow the boat of the _Bonita_ filled with the people of the lorcha. They had been caught by a patrol boat at midnight just as they were on the point of landing on the Luneta.