At once he moved across, spreading the stalks and stepping through to join MacConnachie, who had turned his back and was trying, with as little noise and disturbance as possible, to open a way ahead. Ansell closed right up behind him so that, as MacConnachie stepped through, he could take over the strain of the bending stalks, follow MacConnachie, and then close the gap to their rear.

Three times they executed this manoeuvre, then the gun fired. MacConnachie fell at once. For an instant Ansell thought he had been hit, then saw that he was taking cover and dropped beside him.

The gun discharged an entire magazine in one long burst. At once it was joined by other guns, and the air became livid with the sounds of singing bullets, shattering stalks, and the dull thwacks of misdirected rounds. The flying metal sped about over their heads, spinning from stalk to stalk, pattering down, littering them and the area for many yards about with spent ammunition. An occasional piece of hot metal scorched them, but otherwise they remained unhurt. MacConnachie took advantage of the racket to shout,

‘Soon as they stop, we go again. Some bloody farmer saw us up the hill!’

As abruptly as it had started, the shooting stopped. Voices came to them raised in consternation, and then they heard an entirely new sort of crackling: the force of the bullets had set that corner of the field ablaze.

It was apparent at once that the stuff would burn like petrol; this late in the hot season, it was fiercely combustible. The roar of spreading fire built up with astonishing speed, and the first low smoke seeped through to them. MacConnachie shouted,

‘We’ll have to go like the clappers! Move!’

He was up and away, bullocking through the recalcitrant stalks, smashing down anything that stood in his path. To leave his hands free, he had taken the handle of the case between his teeth. Ansell thought he had never seen him more determined or more savagely angry. He followed in his furiously created wake.

MacConnachie knew that everything now depended on speed. If they failed to beat either the fire or the Goons to the far perimeter, they were done. The Goons would throw a cordon round the field as quickly as they could, and soon the chopper would come to pin-point them.

But it takes time to set a trap, and in that time, however long or short, lay their survival.

They blundered, pitching and stumbling through the stalks, like animals in terror. They seemed to have set a thousand insects free, and, every time they gulped in air, they swallowed a fur of pulped bodies. The black specks built up like paste round their eyes, mouths and nostrils, and the sharp, tangy taste tormented Ansell, filling him with revulsion.

Again and again their boots, plunging forward, struck not earth but the tilted edge of a stalk, skidding off, throwing them sideways or back into the surrounding sticks. Progress was intolerably difficult, the press of heat within the jungle fiercely oppressive. And all the time the dancing sky teased them with glimpses of a freedom beyond their reach.