 An African story, read by Kilian Murphy. For England, the war began in September 1939. The people on the island knew about it at once and began to prepare themselves. In farther places, the people heard about it a few minutes afterwards, and they too began to prepare themselves. And in East Africa, in Keenia Colony, there was a young man who was a white hunter, who loved the plains and the valleys and the cool nights and the slopes of Kilimanjaro. He too heard about the war and began to prepare himself. He made his way over the country to Nairobi, and he reported to the RAF and asked that they make him a pilot. They took him in and he began his training at Nairobi Airport, flying in little tiger moths and doing well with his flying. After five weeks, he nearly got court-martialed because he took his plane up and instead of practicing spins and stall turns as he had been ordered to do, he flew off in the direction of Nakuru to look at the wild animals in the plane. On the way, he thought he saw a sable antelope, and because these are rare animals, he became excited and flew down low to get a better view. He was looking down at the antelope out of the left side of the cockpit, and because of this, he did not see the giraffe on the other side. The leading edge of his starboard wing struck the neck of the giraffe just below the head and cut clean through it. He was flying as low as that. There was damage to the wing, but he managed to get back to Nairobi, and as I said, he was nearly court-martialed, because you cannot explain away a thing like that by saying you hit a large bird, not when there are pieces of giraffe skin and giraffe hair sticking to the wing and the stays. After six weeks, he was allowed to make his first solo cross-country flight, and he flew off from Nairobi to a place called El Dorit, which is a little town eight thousand feet up in the Highlands. But again, he was unlucky. This time he had engine failure on the way due to water in the fuel tanks. He kept his head and made a beautiful forced landing without damaging the aircraft, not far from a little shack which stood alone on the Highland plane with no other habitation in sight. That is a lonely country up there. He walked over to the shack, and there he found an old man living alone, with nothing but a patch of sweet potatoes, some brown chickens, and a black cow. The old man was kind to him. He gave him food and milk, and a place to sleep, and the pilot stayed with him for two days and two nights until a rescue plane from Nairobi spotted his aircraft on the ground, landed beside it, found out what was wrong, went away, and came back with clean petrol which enabled him to take off and return. But during his stay, the old man, who was lonely, and had seen no one for many months, was... Sample complete. Ready to continue?