The chap­ter cap­tures a moment of con­ver­gence and rev­e­la­tion, start­ing with Lieu­tenant May’s arrival on the banks near Pro­fes­sor Max­on’s loca­tion, seek­ing to arrest Doc­tor Carl von Horn. The offi­cer from the U.S.S. New Mex­i­co, part of the Pacif­ic Fleet, explains their jour­ney, ignit­ed by dis­turb­ing find­ings on Maxon’s island and fueled by tales of a quest involv­ing whites seek­ing a kid­napped girl, and men­tions of mon­strous beings led by a giant white man. Despite these intrigu­ing hooks, their pri­ma­ry mis­sion was to appre­hend von Horn, a tar­get of naval inter­est for years.

Upon under­stand­ing von Horn is miss­ing, Lieu­tenant May deter­mines to con­tin­ue the search, with Max­on and his par­ty board­ing the cut­ter for pro­tec­tion. Dur­ing their pur­suit, they encounter one of von Horn’s Dyak com­pan­ions, lead­ing them to a grim dis­cov­ery: von Horn’s head­less body, lying across a chest believed to con­tain trea­sure. The irony unfolds as Max­on reveals the chest’s true con­tents to be books on biol­o­gy and eugen­ics, jux­ta­pos­ing human greed against intel­lec­tu­al pur­suit. Amidst this, they resolve to leave the chest buried, a sym­bol of cause for suf­fer­ing and crime.

As the New Mex­i­co departs from Bor­neo, pri­vate dia­logues unfold, par­tic­u­lar­ly between Vir­ginia and Bulan (Townsend J. Harp­er Jr.), reflect­ing on their grat­i­tude for leav­ing the island and their love sto­ry, bound by extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances. Bulan’s iden­ti­ty cri­sis and fears about his past—possibly being a crim­i­nal or hav­ing loved another—are laid to rest with the real­iza­tion sparked by a seem­ing­ly non­sen­si­cal phrase from his delir­i­um, reveal­ing his true iden­ti­ty and bring­ing mem­o­ry back. The sto­ry of how Bulan end­ed up on Maxon’s island is touched upon—driven by an infatu­ous love, marked by per­sis­tence and a jour­ney span­ning half the world, only to end up as a key fig­ure in a saga stretch­ing beyond antic­i­pa­tion.

This chap­ter indulges in clo­sure, unveil­ing mys­ter­ies and align­ing paths crossed under the strangest banners—of love, iden­ti­ty, and the human con­di­tion, paint­ed against the back­drop of the fierce, untamed wilder­ness of Bor­neo.