"We're gonna try it," she yelled.

Eric held the backboard steady while she climbed off, then he set the oil lamp on the ground. Amy gathered the belts from the sleeping bag, dropped them next to the lamp. Pablo was watching them, his eyes moving back and forth from one to the other.

"We're going to pick you up," Amy said to him. She made a lifting motion with her hands, palms open, then pointed to the backboard. "We're going to put you onto here, and then hoist you up and out."

Pablo stared at her.

Eric moved to the Greek's head; Amy stood at his feet.

"His hips," Eric said.

Amy hesitated. "You sure?"

"If you lift from his feet, he'll bend at the waist."

"But if I lift at his hips, won't he end up arching his back?"

They both stared down at Pablo, picturing these two different scenarios. It was a bad idea, Eric knew. They should send the backboard back up, have them lengthen the rope. Or at least have Stacy come join them. He glanced toward the lamp. It was nearly out of oil.

"At his knees," Eric said.

Amy considered this, but not long enough. A handful of seconds, and then she crouched over Pablo's knees. Eric bent, sliding his hands under the Greek's shoulders. He could feel the cut on his leg stretching, tearing, beginning to bleed again. Pablo groaned, and Amy started to pull away, but Eric shook his head.

"Quickly," he said. "On three."

They counted together: "One…two…three."

And then they lifted.

It was a disaster-far worse than Eric had feared. It seemed to take forever, and yet it happened so fast. They'd barely gotten him off the ground before Pablo began to scream-even more loudly than before, if possible, a pure shriek of pain. Amy almost gave up, almost set him back down on the ground, but Eric shouted at her-"No!"-and she kept going. Pablo's body sagged at the waist; he began to thrash his arms. His scream went on and on. His body was too heavy for Amy; she couldn't keep up with Eric. The Greek's shoulders were level with the backboard now, but his knees were still a good foot beneath it, and it looked as if Amy might not be able to lift them any higher. The bend at Pablo's waist increased. His right arm, flailing, hit the backboard, and it began to swing wildly back and forth.

"Lift!" Eric shouted at Amy, and she tried to hoist Pablo's legs higher, lunging, the Greek's torso twisting, his screams going higher.

Afterward, Eric wasn't even certain how they managed it. It was as if he'd had some sort of blackout in those final moments. He had the impression that they'd been reduced, finally, to making a lurching sort of toss toward the swaying backboard, throwing the Greek's body onto it. All he knew was that he felt terrible, as if he'd absentmindedly stepped on an infant. Amy had begun to cry, was standing there, looking stricken.

"It's okay," Eric said. "He'll be okay." He didn't think she could hear him, though, because Pablo was still screaming. Eric had the urge to vomit, his tongue going thick, bile rising in his throat. He forced himself to breathe. His leg was bleeding again, draining wetly into his shoe, and, once more, he was abruptly conscious of his bladder. "I have to pee," he said.

Amy didn't even look at him. She stood with her hand over her mouth, watching Pablo shriek, the lower half of his body perfectly still while his arms flailed about, the backboard continuing to swing to and fro. Eric limped to the wall, unzipped, began to urinate. By the time he was through, Pablo had started to quiet. His eyes were tightly clenched; there were beads of sweat standing on his forehead.

"We have to tie him down," Amy said. She'd stopped crying, was wiping at her face with her sleeve.

There were four belts on the ground beside the oil lamp; Eric stripped off his, added it to the pile. Amy picked up two of them, buckled them together so that they formed one long strap. She draped this over Pablo's chest, sternum-high, pulled it tight, knotted it in place. The Greek's eyes remained shut. Eric put two more belts together, handed them to Amy, and she repeated the procedure, securing Pablo at his thighs.

"We need another one," Eric said, holding up the last remaining belt.

Amy leaned over Pablo, carefully undid his buckle, started to pull his belt free of its loops. The Greek still didn't open his eyes. Eric handed her the belt he was holding, and she used these last two to tie Pablo across his forehead. Then they stepped back to examine their work.

"It's okay," Eric said again. "He'll be okay." Inside, he felt wretched, though. He wanted Pablo to open his eyes, wanted him to start muttering again, but Pablo just lay there, swaying slightly on the backboard, the beads of sweat continuing to form on his forehead, growing larger and larger, and then suddenly collapsing, rolling sideways down his skull. Eric could feel the blood filling his shoe. His elbow was hurting, his hand burning. There was a bruise on his chin, and his back was itching-he was covered with bug bites from their long walk through the jungle. He was thirsty, hungry; he wanted to go home-not simply back to the relative safety of their hotel, but home. And it wasn't possible, he knew. Nothing was going to be okay. Pablo was terribly hurt, and they were part of this, part of his pain. Eric felt like weeping.

Amy lifted her head toward the darkness above them. "Ready!" she yelled. And then: "Go slow!"

They were just starting to raise him, the windlass beginning to creak, the backboard climbing past Eric's face, moving upward-above him, beyond his reach now-when the lamp dimmed, flickered, and went out.

Jeff," Stacy said, her voice quiet, almost a whisper, but tense, too-he could hear an urgency in it.

He and Mathias were working the windlass's crank, struggling to keep it slow and steady, and he answered without looking at her. "What?"

"The lamp went out."

Now he turned, Mathias and he both, pausing to stare at the mouth of the shaft. It had gone dark, like everything else around them. The sky was clear; there was starlight but the moon hadn't risen yet. Jeff tried to recall if he'd seen it in the preceding nights-what stage it was at, what time it ought to appear-but all that came to him was the image of a cantaloupe slice hanging just above the horizon on one of their first evenings at the beach. Whether it had been rising or sinking, waxing or waning, he couldn't guess. "Call to them," he told her.

Stacy leaned over the hole, cupped her hands around her mouth, shouted, "What happened?"

Eric's voice came echoing up the shaft: "It's out of oil."

Jeff was trying to keep everything in his head, but it wasn't working. He wished he had a sheet of paper, and the time to write things down, make a list, bring a little order to the chaos into which they'd stumbled. In the morning, he could use one of the archaeologists' notebooks, but for now he had to keep going over everything in his mind, feeling at each moment as if he were forgetting some crucial detail. There was water and food and shelter to think about. There were the Mayans at the base of the hill, and Henrich's corpse stuck full of arrows. There was Pablo with his broken back. There were the other Greeks, who might or might not be coming to their rescue. And there was the lamp to add to it all-the lamp without any oil to light it.

He and Mathias resumed their cranking of the windlass. "Let us know when you see him," Jeff said to Stacy.

Thinking wasn't important right now, he told himself; thinking would only confuse things, make him hesitate, slow him down. Thinking could wait until the morning, until daylight. What he needed to do was pull everyone out of the shaft, set them up in the orange tent, and then try, somehow, to get some sleep.

The windlass creaked and creaked as the rope slowly coiled around the barrel. Stacy remained silent; Pablo was still hidden in darkness. Jeff could smell him, though, quite suddenly: an outhouse odor, his shit, his urine. All the time they'd been cutting and braiding the strips of nylon, taping the aluminum poles together, he'd kept trying to tell himself that maybe Eric was wrong, maybe Pablo's back wasn't broken after all. They'd laugh about it later-tomorrow morning, when the Greek was up and limping about-how they'd jumped to their doomsday conclusion. But now, with that stench coming toward him from the shaft, he knew better.