loaded with men and driven by Sean's neighbours, until almost three
hundred men were using the axe on Sean's lovingly planted and tenderly
nursed wattle.
Shoulder to shoulder, chopping in wordless frenzy, trampling the fallen
saplings as they moved forward.
Once a man yelled in pain and Michael looked up to see two Zulus
dragging another back to the road with his leg half severed by the slip
of a careless axe. Dark blood in the moonlight.
One of the neighbours hurried to tend the injured man and Michael
turned back to the destruction of the wattle.
Swing, change hands and swing again, the solid thunk! and the tree
swaying. Shove it over and struggle through the fallci@ tangle of
branches to the next. Swing again, and smell the sweet bleeding sap,
feel the ache in the shoulders and the sting of sweat in the burst
blisters of the palms.
Then suddenly the other smell, acrid on the wind. Smoke.
Michael paused and looked up. The men on each side of him stopped work
also and the firelight danced on their naked, sweat greased bodies as
they leaned on their axes and watched it come On a front four hundred
yards wide, ponderously it rolle down towards them. Not with the
explosive white heat of a burning pine forest, but in the awful
grandeur of orange and dar' red, billowing smoke and torrential
sparks.
Gradually the sound of axes died along the line as men stopped and
watched this appalling thing come down towards them. it lit their
faces clearly, revealing the awe that was on all of them.
They could feel the heat now, great gusts of it that shrivelled the
tender growth ahead of the flames, and suddenly a freak of the wind
sent a bank of black smoke billowing down over the motionless line of
men and blotted them out from each other. It cleared as swiftly as it
came. and left them coughing and gasping.
'Back! Get back to the road!' yelled Michael and the cry was taken up
and thrown along the line. They waded back through the morass of
waist, high vegetation and assembled in small subdued groups along the
road, standing together helplessly with the axes idle in their hands,
fearful in the face of that line of flame and smoke.
'Cut branches to beat with! ' Michael whipped their apathy.
'String out along the edge. ' He hurried along the road, pushing them
back into line, bullying them, cursing in his own fear.
'Come on, the flames will drop when they reach the fallen trees.
Cover your faces, use your shirts. Hey, you, don't just stand there.
With renewed determination each man armed himself with a green branch,
and they re, formed along the road.
Quietly they stood in the daylight glare of the flames, black faces
impassive, white ones flushed with heat and working anxiously.
'Do you think we'll be able to . Michael started as he reached Ken
Broster, and then he stopped. The question he had been about to ask
had no answer. Instead he said,
'We've lost three thousand acres already, but if it gets away from us
here! ' Involuntarily both of them glanced back at the tall mature
