A full day passes, from nine in the morning until late afternoon or evening, from the beginning of the story to the end.

We learn that the nine-year-old boy Schatz woke the narrator up early in the morning with a headache. We are not exactly what time it is when the story ends, but the narrator says: "he had been waiting all day to die."

The story hinges on a misunderstanding. When the doctor says that Schatz has a fever of 102 degrees, Schatz is sure he will die. This is because in school in France, he had heard other boys say nobody could survive a fever of 44 degrees. Logically, since 102 is much higher than 44, Schatz assumed it was all over for him.

However, France uses Celsius, in which temperatures go from zero (freezing) to 100 hundred, which is boiling point. Schatz was now in a country using Fahrenheit, in which 32 degrees is freezing and the boiling point does not occur until 212. He was reasonably safe at 102 degrees.