o was rather a
poor creature, omitted to read the prayer for the Queen one Sunday, it
was to Hofmeyr's evening services alone that most of the officers would
go. I borrowed his hat.

CHAPTER XI

I ESCAPE FROM THE BOERS

Lourenco Marques: December 22, 1899,

How unhappy is that poor man who loses his liberty! What can the wide
world give him in exchange? No degree of material comfort, no
consciousness of correct behaviour, can balance the hateful degradation
of imprisonment. Before I had been an hour in captivity, as the previous
pages evidence, I resolved to escape. Many plans suggested themselves,
were examined, and rejected. For a month I thought of nothing else. But
the peril and difficulty restrained action. I think that it was the
report of the British defeat at Stormberg that clinched the matter. All
the news we heard in Pretoria was derived from Boer sources, and was
hideously exaggerated and distorted. Every day we read in the
'Volksstem'--probably the most astounding tissue of lies ever presented
to the public under the name of a newspaper--of Boer victories and of
the huge slaughters and shameful flights of the British. However much
one might doubt and discount these tales, they made a deep impression. A
month's feeding on such literary garbage weakens the constitution of the
mind. We wretched prisoners lost heart. Perhaps Great Britain would not
persevere; perhaps Foreign Powers would intervene; perhaps there would
be another disgraceful, cowardly peace. At the best the war and our
confinement would be prolonged for many months. I do not pretend that
impatience at being locked up was not the foundation of my
determination; but I should never have screwed up my courage to make the
attempt without the earnest desire to do something, however small, to
help the British cause. Of course, I am a man of peace. I did not then
contemplate becoming an officer of Irregular Horse. But swords are not
the only weapons in the world. Something may be done with a pen. So I
determined to take all hazards; and, indeed, the affair was one of very
great danger and difficulty.

The States Model Schools stand in the midst of a quadrangle, and are
surrounded on two sides by an iron grille and on two by a corrugated
iron fence about 10 ft. high. These boundaries offered little obstacle
to anyone who possessed the activity of youth, but the fact that they
were guarded on the inside by sentries, fifty yards apart, armed w