Through it all I clung to the belief that my will would conquer, that it would enable me to keep off the great enemy from my worn and suffering body until the wished goal was reached; then only would I cease to fight and let death have its way.
There would have been comfort in this belief had it not been for that fevered imagination which corrupted everything that touched me and gave it some new hateful character.

For soon enough this conviction that the will would triumph grew to something monstrous, a parent of monstrous fancies.

Worst of all, when I felt no actual pain, but only unutterable weariness of body and soul, when feet and legs were numb so that I knew not whether I trod on dry hot rock or in slime, was the fancy that I was already dead, so far as the body was concerned--had perhaps been dead for days--that only the unconquerable will survived to compel the dead flesh to do its work.
Whether it really was will--more potent than the bark of barks and wiser than the physicians--or merely the vis medicatrix with which nature helps our weakness even when the will is suspended, that saved me I cannot say; but it is certain that I gradually recovered health, physical and mental, and finally reached the coast comparatively well, although my mind was still in a gloomy, desponding state when I first walked the streets of Georgetown, in rags, half-starved and penniless.
But even when well, long after the discovery that my flesh was not only alive, but that it was of an exceedingly tough quality, the idea born during the darkest period of my pilgrimage, that die I must, persisted in my mind.

I had lived through that which would have killed most men--lived only to accomplish the one remaining purpose of my life.

Now it was accomplished; the sacred ashes brought so far, with such infinite labour, through so many and such great perils, were safe and would mix with mine at last.