Sir Vandeleur Grayburn is serving the second half of his three month sentence in Stanley Prison. He's been in poor health, suffering from fever and outbreaks of boils, but has received no treatment from the Japanese.
In the morning, Sir Vandeleur feels better. After the evening meal he talks to Police Sergeant Vincent Morrison about his travels in Norway and his brother's time as a tea planter in India. He interrupts the conversation to try and urinate into a tin, but fails twice to do so. He drops the tin and collapses. Sergeant Morrison, himself weak, helps him to bed as best he can. Grayburn apologises - 'That was very remiss of me' - and sinks into a coma.
Morrison spends the night by his side.
Sources:
George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 175
Morrison's evidence to war crimes trial, China Mail, April 4, 1947, 2
Note: Wright-Nooth misdates Grayburn's last illness and death to August 6/7, perhaps following Morrison's misdating of Grayburn's transfer to the hospital to 'the first Wednesday in August'. For more information see
http://brianwedgar.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/wystan-auden-christopher-isherwood-and_4.html