The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony (the ebook reader txt) 📕

Four hot, sooty hours later our water was finished, our back-burns were failing, and the flaming monster was ripping through the bush completely out of control. Watching it effortlessly jump block after block I realized with horror that we were now fighting for the life of Thula Thula itself.

All animals understand fire well. Their survival synapses instinctively know that fire is a friend as well as a foe as it re-energizes the bush. Provided they are not trapped, which can cause blind panic, they watch developments carefully and will either cross a river or backtrack behind the blaze and wait on the previously scorched patches where they know they’re safe.

This time the fire was a formidable foe with the intense heat popping burning clods of grass high into the sky. The Zulus call them izinyoni, bird nests, and these sizzling ashes caught in the super-heated vortexes were the dreaded harbingers of the main fire, sparking as they blew ahead and settled in tinder grass, starting new burns every few minutes.

Then incredibly the blaze jumped the river as nimbly as a galloping Derby contender. I stared from my vantage point with mounting despair. We weren’t going to make it. This was too big even for professional firemen. With the howling gale rendering the back-burns totally useless, my men armed only with buckets, hand-pumps and fire-beaters had precious little chance of winning the day.

The inferno then leapt across another break and the chaotic gusts swirling around the hill ripped into it, driving massive black-orange flames up the slope below me.

I froze, despite the intense heat. There was a crew directly in the blaze’s path that would be frazzled in seconds if we didn’t get them out. I hurriedly sent two rangers into the thick smoke to shout to the men to run for their lives.

Twenty minutes later as the ten-foot wall of flames roared ever closer the two rangers returned – but without the crew they went to find.

‘What happened?’ I shouted as they came out of the bush, gagging from the smoke.

‘They’re not there. We couldn’t see them!’ one yelled back.

My mind raced. Not only was the reserve under threat, but we were on the brink of losing people as well. There was no way the men at the bottom of the hill could survive two crackling walls of fire clashing together on top of them.

There was nothing we could do. Brendan had the only water tanker with him. And he was miles away trying to light the rearguard of back-burns, our last flimsy glimmer of hope in stemming the runaway flank that threatened totorch the rest of the reserve, including the lodge and our homes.

Without a word David sprang into the Land Rover, flicked the headlights on and drove as fast as he could into the smoke and flames. All I could hear was the vehicle’s horn blaring as he drove to let the trapped men know where he was. No one could see anything in the billowing soot.

Ten minutes later he broke back through the smoke. There, sitting on the back of the vehicle, was the missing fire crew. Biyela, our gardener, was calmly smoking a cigarette.

As he jumped off the truck I shouted to him: ‘Did you get a light for your bhema in there?’

He looked at his cigarette. ‘Hau!’ he laughed with delight.

We desperately piled onto the Land Rover and David sped off, just yards in front of the flames. There was only one road out of the area, and as long as David kept his foot to the floor, perhaps we could make it.

As we raced for our lives I scoured the bush below us looking for any sign of the elephants. The fire could not have come at a worse time for Nana and Frankie with their two new babies. I was terrified they would be trapped and as the situation worsened I could think of little else.

The road took us parallel to the advancing fire which was now a mile wide, flaring and roaring and leaping on our right, drowning us in toxic fumes and swirling tendrils of smouldering ash.

‘The elephants came through here!’ shouted David above the crackling bellow of the flames. He pointed to the ground. ‘Those tracks are as fresh as hell.’

I motioned for David to stop and quickly got out and felt the dung between thumb and forefinger. It was slimy and wet, sure evidence that they were nearby.

‘They stopped here!’ I shouted back. ‘Probably to rest the babies, but more so I think to let Nana assess the situation. I think she is trying to get to Croc Pools.’

I looked back at the barricade of flame and felt my stomach tighten. Trees were being incinerated whole without pause. Nothing in its path could possibly survive.

‘God, please make it, Nana,’ I said under my breath as I got back into the vehicle.

David gunned the engine and we bounced down the track as fast as we could. Suddenly he swerved wildly as a female nyala bolted out of the bush right in front of us. The poor creature, panicked out of her mind and blinded by a deluge of smoke and ash, ran straight into a tree and careered off into another. With a sickening crack that we could hear above the inferno, her leg snapped. Petrified and unable to get up, she lay there staring with stricken eyes as we drove past.

I grabbed the rifle off the seat next to me and David, seeing what had to be done braked hard in a cloud of dust, jerking the men at the back off-balance and then reversed.

‘Boss!’ he shouted as I got out. ‘Quickly! Quickly or we’re not going to make it ourselves.’

I lifted the Lee – Enfield, leaned on the open door, and two rapid shots later the poor creature was out of its pain and we were again hurtling through the bush in a race with the devil; to