Deriving his strength now from fury rather than any other source, MacConnachie pushed himself into a standing position and looked about, swaying with fatigue. The sky was dark with hurrying smoke that swept past above the tips of the stalks, and, for the first time, as well as hearing the peculiar moaning of the flames, he could feel the waves of heat that preceded the inferno. Time was desperately short. He sought a glimpse of the helicopter in all the murk, and finally caught sight of it: away to the right, as though he were a child composedly finishing an essay by dotting his ‘i’s and crossing his ‘t’s, the navigator was neatly sealing off the right flank. Once he had done that, he would turn to the left, and the ring of fire would be complete.

‘Come on!’

Without looking back, MacConnachie grabbed the suitcase and gun, and set out as fast as he could for the left flank.

The sounds of the fire were everywhere now, roaring around them, and wherever they looked, except to the left, the pale barriers were writhing across the fields towards them. MacConnachie was dimly aware that there was an exception to this: the last complete barrier laid down, the one across their front, was moving away from them, since the general tendency of the fire was to move towards the river. But he didn’t see how this could be turned to their advantage. If they tried to follow this front wall out of the field, they would be caught by the back wall rolling up the field behind them.

Anyway, he concluded as he ran, there was still a chance of squeezing out through the left flank.

And then, in seconds, this hope was taken from them. The helicopter came across, four Very lights were discharged into the field, and the last fire-free area was ablaze.

MacConnachie hesitated for a moment then, barely breaking his stride, shouted back to Ansell,

‘Run like hell! We’re going through!’

There was a chance. The stalks were catching rapidly, but the flares had fallen only a hundred yards ahead. If they could get there quickly enough, the flames would be high but not deep.

Even as he strove hopelessly to extract additional speed from his floundering body, Ansell knew they would never make it. He kept repeating to himself: ‘A man can run the hundred yards in 9.2 seconds; a man can run the hundred yards in 9.2 seconds.’

I think it’s 9.2.

But the flames leapt up with terrifying speed, skipping from stalk to stalk across their front, and as he peered past MacConnachie’s weaving body, desperately anxious now for a clear view of every detail of what lay ahead, the conviction grew in him that to plunge into the fire was to commit suicide. They were getting there far too slowly. It was beyond their stunted capacity.