“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.