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.
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