The dusk fell and then almost at once the dark. The mule moved yet more slowly. Noise broke out all round them; it was like a theatre when the curtain falls and behind in the wings and passages hubbub begins. Things you couldn’t put a name to – jaguars perhaps – cried in the undergrowth, monkeys moved in the upper boughs, and the mosquitoes hummed all round like sewing machines. ‘It’s thirsty walking,’ the man said. ‘Have you by any chance, señor, got a little drink . . . ?’ ‘No.’
