He broke this panorama down into its component parts.

From their present position to the level valley floor was a distance of about a mile. Gentle downhill slope. Cover, fair to middling, with enough isolated scrub to offer a reasonable passage to the valley. Here the fields began, with hedging dykes beyond, and deep cover abundant.

The valley floor was a mile and a half across. The main river ran along its entire length, with two tributaries on the far side, and one on this, his own side. This nearer stream curled back on itself, running towards the hills and petering out. But the farther two, maintaining a bolder passage, ran more or less parallel to the main river until, with it, they disappeared from view behind the swell of the hillside to his right.

At the other, left-hand end of the valley, the four streams came together to form a delta. But here there was a permanent Goon station, and the thickest concentration of those huts that proliferated all about the water system.

They would have, therefore, three hazards of water to cross, one wide and two narrow. Selecting a route that took best advantage of the distribution of huts, jetties and river traffic, MacConnachie memorized it, and turned his attention to that part of the valley that lay outside the rivers on either side.

A simple pattern emerged at once. Wherever the valley floor failed to support either water or a home, it was cultivated, the fields reaching out towards the hills and mountains, into which they were cut and shelved until the soil became intransigent.

He was puzzled by the exact nature of some of the crops. Those fields, for instance, that lay in their direct line of march to the river appeared to be full of a wheat-like growth that stood, unless he was mistaken, over eight feet tall. He turned to Ansell.

‘What the hell’s that stuff?’

‘Which?’

‘In the fields, dead ahead. Looks like corn.’

‘Bloody big corn. Higher than the chap beside it.’

‘Um…’

To this could be added the animation of life – pigs, water-buffalo, chickens, ducks, people, all with the soaring mountains beyond – and the picture was complete.

Or nearly.

For it was MacConnachie’s method, when time allowed, to assimilate first the territory itself, with its natural accretions of indigenous habitation, and then to place within this framework the more recently acquired dispositions of his enemies. This was based on his unquestioned and instinctive knowledge that Nature is on a man’s side, if he knows how to woo her. It is only when a man is caught without knowledge of his surroundings, or with indifference to them, or with an active enmity to them, that he is defeated: Nature is waiting and willing to be loved. Properly cared for, she makes the ideal woman: permissive, protective, productive, and helpful. A man is a fool not to take hands with her.

He placed his enemy in his mind. From the Goon station on the delta, there flowed a steady trickle of three-man patrols, which set out along the valley floor to throw a thin, perpetually shifting barrier across their front.