MacConnachie ran straight at it, extending his legs even farther, conscious of Ansell gasping and thudding to his rear. He knew that their best chance to escape the first ring of fire was to pass this flare before it could take and spread to the flares on his right. Already, from that direction, he could see smoke and flames reaching fiercely into the sky.

As he approached it, the ground yawing and pitching in his field of vision, he saw that the flames had crossed the natural path down which they fled, and were already hungrily devouring the file of stalks to his right. But the fire came rushing to meet him so rapidly that, without thought, he lowered his head and plunged through it. In an instant they were on the other side, with barely time to suffer the intense heat before they had left it. At their backs, the flames soared up in a sudden gust of wind to seal the gap through which they had escaped, towering over them, leaning like a building about to fall and crush them.

Again it was necessary to accelerate and, as Ansell flogged himself to keep pace with MacConnachie, the returning pressure of panic forced itself up in his throat, halving what little air his gaping mouth could capture. They had run for many minutes without pause, and there seemed no escape from their predicament: either they would surrender, or they would be burned to death. His whole body pulsated in sympathy with his wrenching heart and, although it was the running that was breaking him, he was only distantly and dizzily aware of this activity. Some part of him inside was about to rupture explosively.

Slack-kneed and flagging, MacConnachie watched the helicopter through a haze of discomfort and strain, cursing uselessly at the frustration of their position. He was coming to a stop, they would have to recover their breath and their wits. There must be a way out, there must be.

Neatly and methodically, the pilot and navigator were sowing a fresh line of incendiaries across their front, but this time far enough distant that MacConnachie could not hope to reach them before they had taken a thorough hold in depth. Even in the time it took him and Ansell to travel another thirty feet, the thin, swirling smoke had sprung all across their front. He came to a stop, gasping, ‘You bastard! Oh, you bloody bastard!’

Ansell ran straight into him, and they crashed together to the ground.

For some moments they lay as they had fallen: MacConnachie half-supported by his arms as though unwilling, even in this extremity, to adopt a posture of complete exhaustion; Ansell collapsed across his legs, their bodies whooping with the involuntary, racked undulations of landed fish. Then MacConnachie began to fight back in blind anger, crushing his own body into submission to his will, wrenching Ansell’s into a sitting position.

‘Sit up! Sit up, damn you!’

Ansell’s head flopped about, his neck corded with strain, the breath rushing in and out tormentedly between his clenched teeth.