The hot, dusty smell of the bush promised a warm day. Once the sun cleared the mountains the land would heat up fast, but now the early morning slid cool fingers under my jacket.

I walked quietly along the stony road, listening to the sounds of the bush. The hippos should be back in the river already, but if they weren't I wanted to hear them before they saw me. A hippo may look slow and docile, but to get between it and the water is to flirt with disaster. Those short teeth have edges like razors and one bite can rend a human being.

But no hippos were abroad this morning, and I reached the helipad without incident. The helicopter pilot, a wizened gnome of a man named Dave Boyce, motioned me into the right-hand seat. I looked at the lap belt on the seat and then at the open, doorless cockpit. There would be only one strap between me and the sky.

Dave climbed into the pilot's seat, pulled a flight harness over his shoulders, and put on a helmet. I looked once more at the lap belt, shrugged, and climbed in. Lap belt or flight harness, neither one would make much difference if we clipped a treetop.

The tiny helicopter lifted off, and South Africa's Songimvelo Game Reserve spread out beneath us. Dave turned the craft toward the east, staying in the shade of the mountains.

Though a few clouds clung to the mountain tops, sunlight found its way through the land's creases and flowed onto the valley floor. A small herd of giraffes watched us clatter by overhead; a dozen zebra stood in white and black relief against the dun-colored ground. Dave pointed ahead of us and to the right, where an adult white rhino stood in magnificent stillness.

Beyond the rhino, a herd of eland grazed on the plain. This herd was our target; we were to drive the animals into a canvas boma, or corral, where they would be loaded onto a truck and taken to another park to rebuild its herd.

We circled high above the eland. They turned and headed southwest toward the boma, invisible behind a low hill.

At the same time, a yellow light on the control panel blinked on and off and on again. Dave frowned at it and tapped it, but it winked on and off persistently.

He continued working the eland toward the southwest, alternately scowling at the light and tapping it with his right index finger. Finally he turned the helicopter in a big circle away from the animals and landed behind the next hill beside a tarpaulin-covered 55-gallon drum. Someone appeared from the direction of the boma, pulled off the tarp, and used a hand pump to fuel the helicopter.

As we waited, I asked Dave about the blinking light. "That's the low fuel light," he said with a grin. "We were almost out of gas."

Back in the air, we returned to the eland. We flew lower now, and the eland ran restlessly, nervously, resisting Dave's efforts to move them toward the boma. Working in a narrowing circle, he twice cut off a few lead animals from the rest of the herd and let them escape.

After 15 minutes, the herd bunched up and refused to move. We had worked the animals until only one hill separated them from the boma; they had either smelled it or seen it, and wanted to bolt away.

Dave turned ever-lowering circles over them. He swung the helicopter from side to side so we took turns dangling from our seats. After the first time, I checked the buckle of my lap belt; if it let go I would pitch down among the eland, and I had no illusions about surviving the drop.

At last we were just over the thorn trees, only yards from the ground. The eland turned and streamed over the hill, with us flying fast and low behind them. They crossed under the suspended wire that marked the perimeter of the boma. Ground personnel rushed out of hiding to draw the canvas curtains that would complete the enclosure.

The eland milled about in wild confusion, trying to go back the way they had come. Dave tilted the helicopter's nose straight down, scant yards above the ground. The minimum fuel flow warning buzzer sounded, loud and shrill over the chatter of the engine. We hung there, suspended, until the boma was closed and the eland confined. Now I understood why a few helicopters go down each year on this type of operation.

Then Dave pulled up the nose and we dropped almost into the boma. After several low passes to drive the animals into the waiting truck, we lifted away from the boma and set down behind the hill.

I climbed to the top of the truck and looked in at the eland, quiet now in the semi-darkness of the transport. There were 32 of them, pretty pale-yellow beasts. Somewhere past poaching and poor habitat management had wiped out a herd of eland; now these animals would form the nucleus of a new one.

"Ready to go?" Dave called up to me. I climbed off the truck and ran to join him on the helicopter. We lifted off into glorious golden sunlight. Below us, a rhino cow and her calf trotted away, leaving puffs of ocher dust in their wake.

We left the rhino to their dust bath and the eland to their journey, and went back to the reserve headquarters for breakfast.