ABSTRACT
Flames ripped through the sugar cane, leaping into the clear evening sky with an exhilarating crackle. Pillars of smoke around the valley signalled other fields being burned off in preparation for cutting in the morning. As the fire broke through the ten-foot wall of cane, the stocky figures of the field-hands stood silhouetted against the passing inferno, their machetes attached to their hands as if permanently. They were not needed now. A little wind was all that was required to move the fire through the cane, burning away the undergrowth to make it accessible to those blades, and it would burn out as naturally and as quickly as it was started. The men were there to claim their stand for the morrow, identifying which rows would prove the easiest to cut and maximize their earnings, paid by the metre cut. They would go home for a meal and then return to sleep by their chosen pitch, an unarguable claim made and readiness for an early start guaranteed.
