Janie and Tea Cake make it to safety in Palm Beach and survive, but Tea Cake is soon pressed into service by rifle-carrying white men who need him to help clear the wreckage and bury the dead. He and the other workers are instructed about the necessity of separating the bodies of white victims from the black corpses. The whites are to be buried in hastily constructed pine boxes; the blacks are just buried. As soon as Tea Cake has an opportunity to flee, he does so.
Janie is sincerely appreciative of her husband’s efforts to save her life, and she urges him to see a doctor about the dog bite. Tea Cake refuses, insisting that, first of all, they need to find a place to rest. Janie is proud of his heroism, and he wants her to know that she has a real man to take care of her. Shortly thereafter, they decide to go back to the muck. Tea Cake has had enough of Palm Beach; the city is too inhospitable.
Back on the muck, Tea Cake checks up on his old friends and is relieved to learn that only one of them died in the storm. He soon finds work, and after three weeks, he and Janie take time off to enjoy rifle shooting. Some time later, Tea Cake begins to show signs of an infection where the dog bit him on the cheek. Janie tries to take care of him, but as his illness progresses, he becomes more difficult. His inability to swallow water frightens both of them. Janie leaves to fetch Doctor Simmons, a white doctor, for her desperately ill husband, but it is too late. The doctor will be able to get the serum, but nothing can help Tea Cake now.
In the fury of his illness, he struggles with Janie. Hopelessly deranged, he suddenly threatens her with the six-shooter, and she defends herself with the rifle. His pistol and her rifle fire simultaneously. Tea Cake falls forward and buries his teeth in Janie’s forearm, as she catches him. Later, Janie must endure a brief trial, but she is freed. Afterward, she must arrange his funeral. She gives Tea Cake a glorious send-off, burying him in Palm Beach. This time there is real mourning for the dead.
