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120 degradation and his whole physical being with a madness to wallow back into it.

He fought hard. He knew that he must throw that bucket overboard, so he forced his thoughts upon the act.

"I'll walk twenty times the length of the deck with my mind on that," he muttered to himself.

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,