Around nine o’clock the light began to go quickly. For five hours the three men had lain in the boat, sweltering in the tropical heat, tormented by mosquitoes that buzzed above their heads in a thick cloud.
Only twice during the long wait for darkness had Hater moved. He seemed to hover on the edge of consciousness, but the slightest movement or effort to open his eyes drove him back again into a coma that made Rico nervous.
If Hater should die before he could be persuaded to talk! Rico kept thinking. This nightmare he was enduring would be for nothing. If he didn’t get that money his future would be something he dared not contemplate.
Rico had scarcely noticed the heat or the mosquitoes so engrossed was he in worrying about Hater.
Every now and then he would reach forward and touch Hater’s pulse to reassure himself that Hater was still alive. This bundle of skin and bones represented Rico’s future. There was nothing Rico wouldn’t have done for him if there had been anything to do. He kept urging Baird to get moving. Hater should see a doctor, he told Baird repeatedly. It was madness to let him lie in this awful heat without proper attention.
Baird wouldn’t listen. He lay in the stern of the boat, nursing his wrist. Rico was so busy fussing over Hater that he hadn’t noticed how red and angry looking Baird’s left arm had become. Long red streaks came from under the bandage and reached up as far as Baird’s elbow. Every so often Baird hung his arm over the side of the boat, keeping his burning forearm in the water.
He was worried about his arm. He knew it was infected, and he knew, too, he was growing feverish.
His head felt hot, and he experienced hot and cold chills up and down his spine. To be ill at a time like this! he thought savagely. To have to rely on a useless sonofabitch like Rico! If he told Rico how he was feeling, Rico would promptly lose his head. Would the darkness never come? He needed a doctor far more urgently than Hater did.
Rico said sullenly, ‘It’s dark enough now, isn’t it? It’s nearly nine.’
The sun had gone down behind the trees, but they could still see the far bank quite clearly. Sick of doing nothing and tormented by the pain in his arm, Baird decided to take the risk.