Part 13

The anxiety was justified, for at this time Churchill was in a very bad way. During the month in prison he had obtained but little exercise. The lack of food and of water, the cold by night and the terrific heat by day, the long stumbling marches in the darkness, the mental effect upon an extremely nervous, high-strung organization of being hunted, and of having to hide from his fellow men, had worn him down to a condition almost of collapse.

Even though it were neutral soil, in so exhausted a state he dared not venture into the swamps and waste places of the Portuguese territory; and, sick at heart as well as sick in body, he saw no choice left him save to give himself up.

But before doing so he carefully prepared a tale which, although most improbable, he hoped might still conceal his identity and aid him to escape by train across the border.

One night after days of wandering he found himself on the outskirts of a little village near the boundary line of the Transvaal and Portuguese territory. Utterly unable to proceed further, he crawled to the nearest zinc-roofed shack, and, fully prepared to surrender, knocked at the door. It was opened by a rough-looking, bearded giant, the first white man to whom in many days Churchill had dared address himself.

To him, without hope, he feebly stammered forth the speech he had rehearsed. The man listened with every outward mark of disbelief. At Churchill himself he stared with open suspicion. Suddenly he seized the boy by the shoulder, drew him inside the hut, and barred the door.

“You needn’t lie to me,” he said. “You are Winston Churchill, and I--am the only Englishman in this village.”

The rest of the adventure was comparatively easy. The next night his friend in need, an engineer named Howard, smuggled Churchill Into a freight-car, and hid him under sacks of some soft merchandise.

At Komatie-Poort, the station on the border, for eighteen hours the car in which Churchill lay concealed was left in the sun on a siding, and before it again started it was searched, but the man who was conducting the search lifted only the top layer of sacks, and a few minutes later Churchill heard the hollow roar of the car as it passed over the bridge, and knew that he was across the border.

Even then he took no chances, and for two days more lay hidden at the bottom of the car.

When at last he arrived in Lorenzo Marques he at once sought out the English Consul, who, after first mistaking him for a stoker from one of the ships in the harbor, gave him a drink, a bath, and a dinner.

As good luck would have it, the Induna was leaving that night for Durban, and, escorted by a body-guard of English residents armed with revolvers, and who were taking no chances of his recapture by the Boer agents, he was placed safely on board. Two days later he arrived at Durban, where he was received by the Mayor, the populace, and a brass band playing: “Britons Never, Never, Never shall be Slaves!”

For the next month Churchill was bombarded by letters and telegrams from every part of the globe, some invited him to command filibustering expeditions, others sent him woollen comforters, some forwarded photographs of himself to be signed, others photographs of themselves, possibly to be admired, others sent poems, and some bottles of whiskey.

One admirer wrote: “My congratulations on your wonderful and glorious deeds, which will send such a thrill of pride and enthusiasm through Great Britain and the United States of America, that the Anglo-Saxon race will be irresistible.”

Lest so large an order as making the Anglo-Saxon race irresistible might turn the head of a subaltern, an antiseptic cablegram was also sent him, from London, reading:

“Best friends here hope you won’t go making further ass of yourself.

“McNEILL.”

One day in camp we counted up the price per word of this cablegram, and Churchill was delighted to find that it must have cost the man who sent it five pounds.

On the day of his arrival in Durban, with the cheers still in the air, Churchill took the first train to “the front,” then at Colenso. Another man might have lingered. After a month’s imprisonment and the hardships of the escape, he might have been excused for delaying twenty-four hours to taste the sweets of popularity and the flesh-pots of the Queen Hotel. But if the reader has followed this brief biography he will know that to have done so would have been out of the part. This characteristic of Churchill’s to get on to the next thing explains his success. He has no time to waste on postmortems, he takes none to rest on his laurels.

As a war correspondent and officer he continued with Buller until the relief of Ladysmith, and with Roberts until the fall of Pretoria. He was in many actions, in all the big engagements, and came out of the war with another medal and clasps for six battles.

On his return to London he spent the summer finishing his second book on the war, and in October at the general election as a “khaki” candidate, as those were called who favored the war, again stood for Oldham. This time, with his war record to help him, he wrested from the Liberals one of Oldham’s two seats. He had been defeated by thirteen hundred votes; he was elected by a majority of two hundred and twenty-seven.

The few months that intervened between his election and the opening of the new Parliament were snatched by Churchill for a lecturing tour at home, and in the United States and Canada. His subject was the war and his escape from Pretoria.

When he came to this country half of the people here were in sympathy with the Boers, and did not care to listen to what they supposed would be a strictly British version of the war. His manager, without asking permission of those whose names he advertised, organized for Churchill’s first appearance in various cities, different reception committees.

Some of those whose names, without their consent, were used for these committees, wrote indignantly to the papers, saying that while for Churchill, personally, they held every respect, they objected to being used to advertise an anti-Boer demonstration.

While this was no fault of Churchill’s, who, until he reached this country knew nothing of it, it was neither for him nor for the success of his tour the best kind of advance work.

During the fighting to relieve Ladysmith, with General Buller’s force, Churchill and I had again been together, and later when I joined the Boer army, at the Zand River Battle, the army with which he was a correspondent had chased the army with which I was a correspondent, forty miles. I had been one of those who refused to act on his reception committee, and he had come to this country with a commission from twenty brother officers to shoot me on sight. But in his lecture he was using the photographs I had taken of the scene of his escape, and which I had sent him from Pretoria as a souvenir, and when he arrived I was at the hotel to welcome him, and that same evening three hours after midnight he came, in a blizzard, pounding at our door for food and drink. What is a little thing like a war between friends?

During his “tour,” except of hotels, parlor-cars, and “Lyceums,” he saw very little of this country or of its people, and they saw very little of him. On the trip, which lasted about two months, he cleared ten thousand dollars. This, to a young man almost entirely dependent for an income upon his newspaper work and the sale of his books, nearly repaid him for the two months of “one night stands.” On his return to London he took his seat in the new Parliament.

It was a coincidence that he entered Parliament at the same age as did his father. With two other members, one born six days earlier than himself, he enjoyed the distinction of being among the three youngest members of the new House.

The fact did not seem to appall him. In the House it is a tradition that young and ambitious members sit “below” the gangway; the more modest and less assured are content to place themselves “above” it, at a point farthest removed from the leaders.