The brothers visit the Black Skull bar where Morris met Warm. The proprietor is playing a strange game with a beautiful woman: She hides a piece of silk in one of her hands and, for a dollar, the man guesses which hand it is in. The proprietor loses each time, and admits that “I have never won” (201). He tells them that Warm and Morris were following the river upstream to its fountainhead.

While Charlie gets a drink, Eli checks on Tub. An old stable hand recommends removing his damaged eye and offers to perform the operation for $5. Eli accepts the deal. After they drug Tub with laudanum, the horse collapses, almost causes crushing them. The stable hand removes the bad eye with a spoon and cuts the tendon with scissors. When he pours alcohol into the wound to prevent infection, Tub wakes violently.

The brothers visit The Golden Pearl, the most expensive restaurant in town. Eli asks Charlie whether, in light of the revelations in Morris’s diary, they should stop working for the Commodore and abandon the plan to murder Warm. Despite his earlier reservations, Charlie insists that they follow Warm and complete their assignment. Eli decides that this will be his last job for the Commodore.