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.
The launch pulled up against the lorcha, and Huntington sprang aboard. Burke rose from the deck and waited for him. He was hollow and drooping, as if the bony frame had been removed from his body, and his eyes were dead.
A look told the doctor what had happened.
"Yes," said Burke, corroborating the surgeon's unexpressed thought.
Huntington paced the deck.
"Well," he said, finally, "you did well to stand it that long. Next time it will be longer."
Burke did not answer.
