Part 12

For Boer marksmen with Mausers and pompoms, a wrecked railroad train at thirteen hundred yards was as easy a bull’s-eye as the hands of the first baseman to the pitcher, and while the engine butted and snorted and the men with their bare bands tore at the massive beams of the freight-car, the bullets and shells beat about them.

“I have had in the last four years many strange and varied experiences,” continues young Churchill, “but nothing was so thrilling as this; to wait and struggle among these clanging, rending iron boxes, with the repeated explosions of the shells, the noise of the projectiles striking the cars, the hiss as they passed in the air, the grunting and puffing of the engine--poor, tortured thing, hammered by at least a dozen shells, any one of which, by penetrating the boiler, might have made an end of all--the expectation of destruction as a matter of course, the realization of powerlessness--all this for seventy minutes by the clock, with only four inches of twisted iron between danger, captivity, and shame on one side--and freedom on the other.”

The “protected” train had proved a deathtrap, and by the time the line was clear every fourth man was killed or wounded. Only the engine, with the more severely wounded heaped in the cab and clinging to its cow-catcher and foot-rails, made good its escape. Among those left behind, a Tommy, without authority, raised a handkerchief on his rifle, and the Boers instantly ceased firing and came galloping forward to accept surrender. There was a general stampede to escape. Seeing that Lieutenant Franklin was gallantly trying to hold his men, Churchill, who was safe on the engine, jumped from it and ran to his assistance. Of what followed, this is his own account:

“Scarcely had the locomotive left me than I found myself alone in a shallow cutting, and none of our soldiers, who had all surrendered, to be seen. Then suddenly there appeared on the line at the end of the cutting two men not in uniform. ‘Plate-layers,’ I said to myself, and then, with a surge of realization, ‘Boers.’ My mind retains a momentary impression of these tall figures, full of animated movement, clad in dark flapping clothes, with slouch, storm-driven hats, posing their rifles hardly a hundred yards away. I turned and ran between the rails of the track, and the only thought I achieved was this: ‘Boer marksmanship.’

“Two bullets passed, both within a foot, one on either side. I flung myself against the banks of the cutting. But they gave no cover. Another glance at the figures; one was now kneeling to aim. Again I darted forward. Again two soft kisses sucked in the air, but nothing struck me. I must get out of the cutting--that damnable corridor. I scrambled up the bank. The earth sprang up beside me, and a bullet touched my hand, but outside the cutting was a tiny depression. I crouched in this, struggling to get my wind. On the other side of the railway a horseman galloped up, shouting to me and waving his hand. He was scarcely forty yards off. With a rifle I could have killed him easily. I knew nothing of the white flag, and the bullets had made me savage. I reached down for my Mauser pistol. I had left it in the cab of the engine. Between me and the horseman there was a wire fence. Should I continue to fly? The idea of another shot at such a short range decided me. Death stood before me, grim and sullen; Death without his light-hearted companion, Chance. So I held up my hand, and like Mr. Jorrock’s foxes, cried ‘Capivy!’ Then I was herded with the other prisoners in a miserable group, and about the same time I noticed that my hand was bleeding, and it began to pour with rain.

“Two days before I had written to an officer at home: ‘There has been a great deal too much surrendering in this war, and I hope people who do so will not be encouraged.’”

With other officers, Churchill was imprisoned in the State Model Schools, situated in the heart of Pretoria. It was distinctly characteristic that on the very day of his arrival he began to plan to escape.

Toward this end his first step was to lose his campaign hat, which he recognized was too obviously the hat of an English officer. The burgher to whom he gave money to purchase him another innocently brought him a Boer sombrero.

Before his chance to escape came a month elapsed, and the opportunity that then offered was less an opportunity to escape than to get himself shot.

The State Model Schools were surrounded by the children’s playgrounds, penned in by a high wall, and at night, while they were used as a prison, brilliantly lighted by electric lights. After many nights of observation, Churchill discovered that while the sentries were pacing their beats there was a moment when to them a certain portion of the wall was in darkness. This was due to cross-shadows cast by the electric lights. On the other side of this wall there was a private house set in a garden filled with bushes. Beyond this was the open street.

To scale the wall was not difficult; the real danger lay in the fact that at no time were the sentries farther away than fifteen yards, and the chance of being shot by one or both of them was excellent. To a brother officer Churchill confided his purpose, and together they agreed that some night when the sentries had turned from the dark spot on the wall they would scale it and drop among the bushes in the garden. After they reached the garden, should they reach it alive, what they were to do they did not know. How they were to proceed through the streets and out of the city, how they were to pass unchallenged under its many electric lights and before the illuminated shop windows, how to dodge patrols, and how to find their way through two hundred and eighty miles of a South African wilderness, through an utterly unfamiliar, unfriendly, and sparsely settled country into Portuguese territory and the coast, they left to chance. But with luck they hoped to cover the distance in a fortnight, begging corn at the Kaffir kraals, sleeping by day, and marching under cover of the darkness.

They agreed to make the attempt on the 11th of December, but on that night the sentries did not move from the only part of the wall that was in shadow. On the night following, at the last moment, something delayed Churchill’s companion, and he essayed the adventure alone. He writes:

“Tuesday, the 12th! Anything was better than further suspense. Again night came. Again the dinner bell sounded. Choosing my opportunity, I strolled across the quadrangle and secreted myself in one of the offices. Through a chink I watched the sentries. For half an hour they remained stolid and obstructive. Then suddenly one turned and walked up to his comrade and they began to talk. Their backs were turned.

“I darted out of my hiding-place and ran to the wall, seized the top with my hands and drew myself up. Twice I let myself down again in sickly hesitation, and then with a third resolve scrambled up. The top was flat. Lying on it, I had one parting glimpse of the sentries, still talking, still with their backs turned, but, I repeat, still fifteen yards away. Then I lowered myself into the adjoining garden and crouched among the shrubs. I was free. The first step had been taken, and it was irrevocable.”

Churchill discovered that the house into the garden of which he had so unceremoniously introduced himself was brilliantly lighted, and that the owner was giving a party. At one time two of the guests walked into the garden and stood, smoking and chatting, in the path within a few yards of him.

Thinking his companion might yet join him, for an hour he crouched in the bushes, until from the other side of the wall he heard the voices of his friend and of another officer.

“It’s all up!” his friend whispered. Churchill coughed tentatively. The two voices drew nearer. To confuse the sentries, should they be listening, the one officer talked nonsense, laughed loudly, and quoted Latin phrases, while the other, in a low and distinct voice, said: “I cannot get out. The sentry suspects. It’s all up. Can you get back again?”

To go back was impossible. Churchill now felt that in any case he was sure to be recaptured, and decided he would, as he expresses it, at least have a run for his money.

“I shall go on alone,” he whispered.

He heard the footsteps of his two friends move away from him across the play yard. At the same moment he stepped boldly out into the garden and, passing the open windows of the house, walked down the gravel path to the street. Not five yards from the gate stood a sentry. Most of those guarding the school-house knew him by sight, but Churchill did not turn his head, and whether the sentry recognized him or not, he could not tell.

For a hundred feet he walked as though on ice, inwardly shrinking as he waited for the sharp challenge, and the rattle of the Mauser thrown to the “Ready.” His nerves were leaping, his heart in his throat, his spine of water. And then, as he continued to advance, and still no tumult pursued him, he quickened his pace and turned into one of the main streets of Pretoria. The sidewalks were crowded with burghers, but no one noticed him. This was due probably to the fact that the Boers wore no distinctive uniform, and that with them in their commandoes were many English Colonials who wore khaki riding breeches, and many Americans, French, Germans, and Russians, in every fashion of semi-uniform.

If observed, Churchill was mistaken for one of these, and the very openness of his movements saved him from suspicion.

Straight through the town he walked until he reached the suburbs, the open veldt, and a railroad track. As he had no map or compass he knew this must be his only guide, but he knew also that two railroads left Pretoria, the one along which he had been captured, to Pietermaritzburg, and the other, the one leading to the coast and freedom. Which of the two this one was he had no idea, but he took his chance, and a hundred yards beyond a station waited for the first outgoing train. About midnight, a freight stopped at the station, and after it had left it and before it had again gathered headway, Churchill swung himself up upon it, and stretched out upon a pile of coal. Throughout the night the train continued steadily toward the east, and so told him that it was the one he wanted, and that he was on his way to the neutral territory of Portugal.

Fearing the daylight, just before the sun rose, as the train was pulling up a steep grade, he leaped off into some bushes. All that day he lay hidden, and the next night he walked. He made but little headway. As all stations and bridges were guarded, he had to make long detours, and the tropical moonlight prevented him from crossing in the open. In this way, sleeping by day, walking by night, begging food from the Kaffirs, five days passed.

Meanwhile, his absence had been at once discovered, and, by the Boers, every effort was being made to retake him. Telegrams giving his description were sent along both railways, three thousand photographs of him were distributed, each car of every train was searched, and in different parts of the Transvaal men who resembled him were being arrested. It was said he had escaped dressed as a woman; in the uniform of a Transvaal policeman whom he had bribed; that he had never left Pretoria, and that in the disguise of a waiter he was concealed in the house of a British sympathizer. On the strength of this rumor the houses of all suspected persons were searched.

In the Volksstem it was pointed out as a significant fact that a week before his escape Churchill had drawn from the library Mill’s “Essay on Liberty.”

In England and over all British South Africa the escape created as much interest as it did in Pretoria. Because the attempt showed pluck, and because he had outwitted the enemy, Churchill for the time became a sort of popular hero, and to his countrymen his escape gave as much pleasure as it was a cause of chagrin to the Boers.

But as days passed and nothing was heard of him, it was feared he had lost himself in the Machadodorp Mountains, or had succumbed to starvation, or, in the jungle toward the coast, to fever, and congratulations gave way to anxiety.