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 with rifle and revolver, made them a well-nigh insuperable barrier.  No walls are so hard to pierce as living walls.  I thought of the penetrating power of gold, and the sentries were sounded.  They were incorruptible.  I seek not to deprive them of the credit, but the truth is that the bribery market in the Transvaal has been spoiled by the millionaires.  I could not afford with my slender resources to insult them heavily enough.  So nothing remained but to break out in spite of them.  With another officer who may for the present—­since he is still a prisoner—­remain nameless, I formed a scheme.

[Illustration:  Plan of States Model Schools]

After anxious reflection and continual watching, it was discovered that when the sentries near the offices walked about on their beats they were at certain moments unable to see the top of a few yards of the wall.  The electric lights in the middle of the quadrangle brilliantly lighted the whole place but cut off the sentries beyond them from looking at the eastern wall, for from behind the lights all seemed darkness by contrast.  The first thing was therefore to pass the two sentries near the offices.  It was necessary to hit off the exact moment when both their backs should be turned together.  After the wall was scaled we should be in the garden of the villa next door.  There our plan came to an end.  Everything after this was vague and uncertain.  How to get out of the garden, how to pass unnoticed through the streets, how to evade the patrols that surrounded the town, and above all how to cover the two hundred and eighty miles to the Portuguese frontiers, were questions which would arise at a later stage.  All attempts to communicate with friends outside had failed.  We cherished the hope that with chocolate, a little Kaffir knowledge, and a great deal of luck, we might march the distance in a fortnight, buying mealies at the native kraals and lying hidden by day.  But it did not look a very promising prospect.