It was about this time that Mr. Winston Churchill rejoined the army in Natal, after effecting an escape from his Boer prison which reads like a chapter in some wild romance. After the armoured train affair he was sent to the State Model Schools in Pretoria, where the British officers were confined. The place was built of brick, standing in a gravelled playground, which was surrounded by a ten-foot-high iron fence except on the east, where was a high wall. Inside the fence were armed sentries, stationed at intervals of fifty yards. Attempts to bribe the sentries to connive at Mr. Churchill's escape failed. At night the yard was brilliantly lighted by electric lights, placed in its centre. These, however, blinded by their glare the sentries who stood behind them and cut off the view of the eastern side of the enclosure at a point where stood the offices of the school. If the two nearest sentries under the eastern wall had their backs turned, escape was possible for one or two determined men. December 11 was fixed by Mr. Churchill and a friend of his, Captain Haldane, for the attempt. But the sentries gave them no chance. On the evening of the 12th Mr. Churchill alone made a second effort. For an hour he watched the sentries through a chink in the offices; the moment at last came when they turned their backs and began to talk. In an instant he laid hold of the top of the wall, scaled it, and dropped over it into the garden of a villa. There he threw himself down under some bushes and waited. The villa was brilliantly lighted up and full of people; presently two men came out of it and stood, it seemed, watching him. A cat and a dog scurried past him, rustling the leaves and fixing attention on the very place where he lay in ambush. Yet he was not seen. The two men turned and went out of the garden, and he followed them boldly, with four slabs of chocolate and £75 as his equipment. [Illustration: BLUEJACKETS PROTECTING AN ARMOURED TRAIN WITH ROPE FENDERS. This train ran on the line between Pietermaritzburg and Colenso.] [Illustration: UNSHIPPING STORES AT DURBAN FOR GENERAL BULLER'S ARMY.] [Sidenote: [DEC. 11-12, 1899.] Once in the streets of Pretoria he steered by the stars to where he conjectured the Delagoa Bay railway to lie. He struck a railway--it seemed to be the right one--and walked along it till he passed a station; then he stopped and hid, determined to board a passing train in motion. Readers may guess the pluck and coolness required for such an undertaking. A train came in sight at last; stopped at the station; started and thundered past the fugitive. "I hurled myself at the trucks," writes Mr. Churchill, "clutched at something, missed, clutched again, missed again, grasped some sort of handhold, was swung off my feet--my toes bumping on the line--and with a struggle seated myself on the couplings of the fifth truck." The truck was laden with empty coal sacks, and under these Mr. Churchill buried himself and slept.