They crouched side by side, and peered through the scrub. Immediately ahead was the edge of the first field, running across their front and presenting a solid wall of close-packed stalks to their gaze. The intervening space was alive with flying insects, hovering in the air, darting about, coming to drink at their streaked faces, swarming maddeningly. The heat of the day was building up, the familiar burden of the sun lay heavy upon them, and within the muffling folds of their garments they sweated without pause.

So far as they could see, the field stretched for about a hundred and fifty yards to their left. To the right, it ended abruptly at a narrow track some thirty feet distant, on the far side of which were the corner and walls of another exactly similar field, which twisted and wound away to disappear from view behind the scrub.

It was reasonable to assume that other tracks led down into the valley somewhere to their left, but at this distance they received the impression of a continuing wall of stalks, as though one field ran into the next without demarcation. MacConnachie muttered,

‘I don’t fancy that lot. It’ll show from above. Let’s try the track.’

They wriggled through the clutching undergrowth until they came to the corner of the field. MacConnachie raised his hand and Ansell stopped. With extreme caution, MacConnachie edged forward, face against the earth, until he could see round the intervening stalks.

One of the three-man patrols was wandering idly up the track towards them, guns at the trail, its members chatting in a desultory way with a group of armed farmers. They were two minutes distant.

As cautiously as he had extended his head – to make a sudden movement is to draw the searching eye – MacConnachie withdrew it.

It wasn’t until he turned that Ansell knew anything was amiss. MacConnachie whispered,

‘We’ve had it. They’re coming up the track.’ He nodded towards the dangerous, towering stalks. ‘We’ll have to take to the long grass.’

Ansell knew at once that this was the moment of greatest danger. Inside that jungle they would be blind. He glanced fearfully to his left.

‘Haven’t we time to get down there?’

‘No. Now do exactly as I do.’

MacConnachie rose, looked to his rear, then extended his arms straight ahead, passing them between two of the boundary stalks and as deeply into the growth as he could. Then he extended them outwards, bending the stalks apart from the base, and opening a passage into which it was possible for him to step. He looked back over his shoulder.

‘Toss in the case.’

Ansell took the suitcase, squeezed in front of MacConnachie’s arched body, and threw it gently down among the bowed stalks. MacConnachie said,

‘Once I’m in, do the same beside me.’