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.
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