When he looked back, Ansell was appalled by the size and rate of progress of the wall of fire. It was creeping forward to left and right and little faster than at the centre, which somehow made the spectacle more horrifying; and the flames reached all of thirty feet into the air, the heat so intense that it was only after another ten feet of rushing vapour that smoke formed and swirled down towards them. It looked to be a horrible death, and yet he found that he could face it. It was the smaller, more personal inconveniences that distressed him: the heat, the smell, the noise, the sense of oppression.

By the time they reached the scorched and ragged edge, where the flares had fallen to set the forward wall on the move, the press of heat had become constant and breathing was difficult. Sweat poured from them. The back wall was no more than four minutes away.

The helicopter had started to behave as though panic had seized its occupants, repeatedly coming right down low as though to remind them that, once they had indicated their surrender, it would need time to land and take them off. MacConnachie smiled. That man should know, if any man did, that surrender was out of the question.

And then the helicopter rose to settle forty feet above, waiting for the end, and MacConnachie raised his hand in acknowledgement. The pilot had a clear duty, all else failing, to kill them rather than let them choose their own death; but he, too, raised a hand in salute, and the compact was made.

The moment they stepped on to the smouldering refuse of stalks in an effort to edge closer to the wall of flame before them, Ansell knew they were finished. The heat that came up from the blackened earth was staggering, making him gasp for breath and screw up his whole face in an attempt to escape the scathing radiation behind a shield of his raised arms. In front, through slitted eyes, he saw the figure of MacConnachie picking his way as though he walked on eggshell, the case in one hand, the gun still in the other; it was difficult to make him out properly against the swaying flames beyond.

Now Ansell was afraid, his legs trembled. It was the size of the thing, his inability to make the smallest act that could affect the outcome; he felt hopelessly abandoned, like a child at the mercy of vast, impersonal, adult concerns. The heat possessed him. He could have cried without the least embarrassment.

MacConnachie knew he had been right. The heat was so intense that, when the back wall reached the scorched area, the flames would leap forward to join the front wall without the need of any intervening combustible material; they would be snuffed out just like that.

He couldn’t accept it. Nor would he. Outrage and grief forced