Читать книгу Winston Churchill, A Biography - Rene Kraus - Страница 10

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Ever since the prison warden of Ventnor, the brother-in-law of his nurse Mrs. Everest, told the child his sad and grisly prison stories, Winston Churchill has had a sort of claustrophobia.

Churchill now was a bird in a cage. If there was any condition that he was simply physically unable to bear, it was captivity. It was worse than seasickness. True, the British officers among whom the war correspondent was thrust, despite his vehement protests, were kept under honorable arrest in the buildings of the State Model Schools at Pretoria. But even so the confinement was intolerable. Senseless disputes broke out between the most intimate friends—what prisoners of war call barb-wire psychosis. There was but one thought, one subject of conversation, one obsession—out!

Sixty British officers, among them Captain Haldane of the armored train, were guarded by forty “Zarps”—South African Republican Police. Being elderly, and no longer fit for service at the front, the Zarps were by now rather easy-going. On this Churchill, Haldane, and Lieutenant Brockie based their plan. From a window in the lavatory it was easy to climb down outside the walls. Of course they would probably run straight into the arms of the sentries who kept guard over the east side of the building at intervals of about fifteen feet. Churchill had noticed that these backwoods warriors would often talk together when the nights were long and lonely. He had only to find the right moment, while they were absorbed in their gossip.

On December 11 the three conspirators made their first abortive attempt at escape. It did not work. The risk that the guard would look up, and shoot without stopping to ask questions, seemed too great. But it was only for twenty-four hours that it seemed too great. By then Churchill had determined to run any risk. He would lead the way, slipping through the tiny window of the lavatory, and swinging down from the roof. Then he would hide in the garden of the villa across the way, which was full of bushes, and await his two companions, who would follow at once.

Lieutenant Brockie had dug up somewhere a compass and a few provisions. He also spoke Dutch and Kaffir. They would need it all. The Portuguese frontier was about three hundred miles away.

Late on the night of December 12 Churchill stood at the narrow opening of the window. His heart was beating a tattoo. The nearest two sentries were standing down below, as stiff as wax figures, staring ahead. Suddenly one of them faced sharply about, and walked toward his companion. The two voices rose in monotonous conversation.

Twice Churchill pulled himself up to the loophole. Both times his courage deserted him. On the third attempt there was no more question and no calculation. Better right into the bullets than back into the cell. Once more the fugitive pulled himself up. He forced his way through the loophole. His waistcoat caught on the ornamental metal-work at the top. In the moment he needed to release himself he could see one of the sentries lighting a cigarette. The man was standing so near that Churchill could make out the lines on his palms in the light of the match. Then he let himself down the wall. A leap, and he was hidden in the shrubbery of the neighboring garden.

At that moment a Boer civilian, evidently the owner of the villa, came out of the house. He took a couple of steps toward the bush where Churchill was hiding. Then, halting, he gazed into space. His dog came further. The animal’s luminous, live-coal eyes stared straight into the fugitive’s face. Chance or fate? The dog did not bark. It returned in answer to a whistle from its master. Other people, obviously guests, walked through the garden. Churchill could not leave his hiding-place. Besides, he had to wait for his two companions.

Suddenly a voice came from the prison. “All up!” A burst of laughter followed, and the noise of two occupants obviously having a royal good time. Churchill listened tensely. The jolly, noisy conversation was interspersed with Latin fragments. A few words of English and a few words of hog-latin, shrouded in constant laughter, yielded this sentence: “They cannot get out. The sentry suspects. It’s all up. Can you get back again?”

The Portuguese frontier was far away. Except for a few bars of chocolate he had no provisions. He did not speak the language of the country. They were sure to discover his flight by morning roll-call at latest, and to harry him all through the city, and all through the country if he should get out of Pretoria.

“I shall go alone!” Churchill replied to the laughing voices.

And now begins one of the greatest escape stories ever told. Winston Churchill has told it dozens, probably hundreds of times on lecture tours all over England and the United States. He has described it in books and magazine articles. He has relived the story of those days for years.

Today it sounds like a dream. Perhaps even then it was a waking dream. With somnambulistic certainty he found his way through the unknown streets of Pretoria, which were menacingly populous even at night—precisely in the right direction, always toward the south. Orion, his companion of the Nile, may have guided him. After half an hour’s wandering he struck a railroad. Which way to Portuguese Delagoa, to eastward? So far as he could judge, the tracks led north. Perhaps the rails made a curve at just this point. He would follow them. It was still cool. Winston Churchill breathed deep of the air. He had a sense of freedom whose bliss could not be described. Fool’s paradise! Within an hour they would have him.

He began to calculate methodically. Naturally he could not cover the three hundred miles on foot. He must steal a ride. Perfectly simple—he would jump aboard the next train. But that in turn was not so simple, no matter how carefully calculated. After two hours on foot he saw the lights of a little railway station. That meant there would be people near by. That meant he must go around, stooping deep in the ditch, and lie in wait two hundred yards beyond the station. By the time the train, which would undoubtedly stop at the little station, arrived at this point it would not be difficult for him to jump aboard. Winston Churchill was a close figurer, even in the middle of an adventure.

He did it. Just how he did it he could not tell afterward. He vaguely remembered seeing yellow lights flash out. In the glare of the locomotive the sharp silhouette of the engine stood out black against the night sky. The rumble of the train turned to a roar as it charged up. The cars were ungainly steel masses. Churchill leaped at a car. His hands sought something to cling to. They slipped off. He tried again. Again his hands flapped helplessly in the air. The third time they found some sort of fastening. And in the middle of a carload of sacks covered with thick coal dust the exhausted youth fell asleep. It was to be hoped that he was sleeping in the right direction, not back into the middle of the land of the Boers.

The morning sun shone straight into his eyes. It rose in the east. He was travelling eastward, in the right direction. But he could no longer trust to the train. At sometime during the day there would undoubtedly be an inspection. The sacks were so soft and the African soil would be so hard! Nevertheless, forward! He leaped from the rattling train, fell into the ditch, turned both ankles, laughed, dragged himself to a brook, took a drink. He thought things over.

It was now four o’clock in the morning. He must wait until evening before he could take another train. He had therefore to stay hidden for at least fourteen hours. Would they find him meanwhile? He could not help laughing again. Not a soul could know where he was. He had not the faintest idea himself. But he was hungry. And he must be sparing of his chocolate. He could not afford but one bar at most for today. Who could tell when another decent meal would come his way?

By noon the heat was so oppressive that he collapsed under the small grove of trees that he had chosen for his refuge. He was too weak and exhausted to get further. So a vulture seemed to think. With flapping wings the amiable creature circled about its presumptive victim. The monster knew it would be having a square meal shortly. By tomorrow at latest.

Suddenly the vulture flew off. Human beings were near by. Boer farmers, heavily armed, with their Kaffirs. Men were more dangerous than vultures. Winston Churchill prayed: Lord, let them miss seeing me!

His companions in Bangalore, who did not quite believe in the Lord, were idiots. The Boer farmers overlooked the lonely man.

All day Churchill stared at the railroad line. Two or three trains had passed. After dusk he would jump aboard another. But after dusk there were no more trains. Probably railway traffic was halted for the night, he reflected. It soon turned out that he was right. It was a war measure that extended to this part of the country.

And so he began footing it again, hungry and worn out as he was. After hours’ walking he came to another little station where three freight trains were sleeping. Should he trust one of them? Impossible! Who could tell where the trains might go tomorrow? Suppose he looked at the labels on the trucks or the merchandise. He crept closer. Then he heard the roaring, howling laughter of some Kaffirs. Of course he could go no closer to the station. After all, he would be running straight into certain arrest. But neither could he walk on. It was still at least a hundred and fifty miles to the frontier. If he could no longer depend even on the trains, the jig was up.

Lights were burning a few hundred paces beyond the little railway station. Probably it was a Kaffir kraal. Churchill came to a decision. The Kaffirs, so pitilessly exploited by the Boers, could not possibly be faithful to their masters. Even if they knew nothing of Great Britain, which was coming to free them, they could understand the comforting crackle of a British banknote. Churchill had twenty pounds in his pocket. With the equivalent of a hundred dollars a man is not altogether lost. He dragged himself toward the lights with his last strength.

Indeed it must have been a dream. No such miracles happen by day. When he knocked at the next house the door opened a crack, after some minutes, and a voice asked in perfect English, “Who is this?”

He had run into the only house for thirty miles around where they would not have betrayed him—the house of Mr. John Howard, manager of the Transvaal Collieries, a Britisher.

What he had taken for a Negro kraal was in fact a village of miners, which Mr. Howard directed. Out of consideration for his English origin—and for a suitable present made to the local Field-Cornet of the Boers—they had not drafted him to fight against the British invaders. At the moment neither of the two men facing each other through the half-open door knew who the other was.

“I am a burgher.” Churchill began the tale that he had thought up in a flash. “I have had an accident. I was on my way to join my commando at Komati Poort. I have fallen off the train. I have been unconscious for hours. I think I have dislocated my shoulder.”

“Come in!” said the householder.

Inside he looked at the intruder more closely. “Just a minute,” he growled, leaving his unexpected guest alone. When he came back into the room he brought a cold leg of mutton with him. “Help yourself, Mr. Churchill,” he grinned. “Of course you are the man they are looking for. I have just been reading your description. And the Field-Cornet has already been asking about you. Naturally I am suspect as a Britisher. All the English houses in the republic are being searched for you. Do you want to see?”

Photo from European

A PRISONER IN THE BOER WAR

An old photograph showing Winston Churchill (right) before his dramatic escape

Sure enough, there was the warrant:

“Twenty-five pounds REWARD is offered by the Sub-Commission of the Fifth Division, on behalf of the special constable of the said Division, to anyone who brings the escaped prisoner of war CHURCHILL dead or alive to this office. For the Sub-Commission of the Fifth Division, (signed) Lodk. de Haas, Sec.”

Another paper from those days, also promising twenty-five pounds’ reward to the captor, describes the fugitive more carefully, if less flatteringly:

“An Englishman of indifferent build walking with a forward stoop, pale appearance, red-brownish hair, small and hardly noticeable moustache, talks through his nose and cannot pronounce the letter S properly.”

Mr. Howard made a worried face. Did he not dare to assist in the flight of a criminal for whom a warrant was out?

No, that was not it. It was worse. He was afraid of his Dutch cook. “She keeps spying on me. Tomorrow she will be asking what became of the leg of mutton.” (Churchill had meanwhile devoured it down to the last scrap.) “You can’t possibly stay here. We’ll hide you in the coal mines. You can sleep in the office today. During the day I’ll keep the Kaffirs away from you. I’ll tell them the office is bewitched.”

The following evening three more Britishers arrived whom Mr. Howard had drummed up in the neighborhood. Two were Scotch colliers, the third, Mr. Dewsnap, came, of all places, straight from Oldham. “It’s a scandal that they let you be beaten,” he greeted the half-dead Churchill with a firm handshake. “Well, just wait. Next time you’ll be elected in triumph. I’ll take care of that!”

“You don’t say?” Winston Churchill was himself again.

Now he had merely to stay hidden a few days in a half-flooded mine. By day he read a book that Mr. Howard had picked out and brought to him as suitable reading—Stevenson’s Kidnapped. By night he fought off the rats. Sometimes he was even so tired that he paid no attention to these four-legged companions of his imprisonment.

On the evening of December 18 Mr. Howard paid a visit to the mine. “The Field-Cornet was just with me,” he grinned, “to bring me the good news that you were captured at Waterval Boven yesterday. Now they won’t be looking for you quite so hard. This is the moment to get out of the trap—before they realize their mistake.”

Next morning a train left for Delagoa Bay in Portuguese territory with a consignment of wool. The shipper was an amiable Dutch merchant, Mynheer Burgener. He had no objection to an English lieutenant’s being packed into one of the wool bales.

After an endless journey eastward through the Transvaal the wool and Churchill arrived in Delagoa Bay—and freedom. The car in which the fugitive lay hidden had not been examined at the frontier. The customs inspection had taken place at the point of departure, and the car was sent off in an armor of barbed wire so that nothing should be smuggled into it en route.

The nearest British consul was at Lourenço Marques. The fugitive went to call. “Sorry,” said the secretary, “the Consul is very busy.”

“Just tell him Mr. Churchill of the Morning Post is calling.”

The Consul came close to falling over backward as he welcomed the visitor.

Lourenço Marques was a hotbed of Boers and Boer sympathizers. They tried to kidnap Churchill. Their most publicized prisoner of war was not going to get away from them so simply as all that.

Better, then, to take the next vessel for Durban. A fig for seasickness, thought Churchill, who had gone through worse things than that.

The American hospital ship Maine lay in harbor at Durban. An American lady was in figurative command on the bridge—Lady Randolph Churchill. With the help of friends in her native land she had outfitted the hospital ship, and put it at the service of the wounded in the Boer War. Accompanying her was John Churchill, Winston’s younger and much-beloved brother, who was in the expedition, and had received a slight injury.

Reunion on the Maine. But not yet homeward. Winston had still a small account in Pretoria to settle. Once more he joined the campaign. As a reward for his adventures the sleepy General Buller once more bestowed the old lieutenant’s uniform on him. But Churchill did not keep it on long. Disguising himself as a civilian he rode a bicycle through the middle of the city of Johannesburg, the enemy general headquarters, still held by the Boers, with a message to Lord Roberts, on the other side, from his old friend Ian Hamilton, whose troop he had joined.

Then he was entangled in another dozen fights—wherever there was hot work. Once he got lost again in the midst of the enemy. A Lancashire Hussar told him to mount behind on his own horse, which presently was shot from under its two riders. Churchill tried to console the man from Lancashire: “After all, you saved my life by taking me along.”

“Who cares for you?” replied the lad, with tears in his eyes. “It’s my horse I’m grieving for.” The Hussar was Trooper Roberts, who received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his valor on this occasion.

And now the little account in Pretoria was due at last. With the Boers in full retreat, two young English officers stormed the city quite alone. They had not even their boys with them. One was the Duke of Marlborough, the other was his cousin Winston.

Winston found his way to the State Model Schools like a flash. It had been much harder in the other direction.

The sentries lowered their rifles as the two Englishmen galloped up.

“Captain Haldane!” yelled Churchill, although his mother on board the Maine had just been telling him that he really must learn to mend his manners. “Captain Haldane! You’re free! You’re all free!”

The prisoners had been expecting this day. One of them had even patched together a Union Jack out of colored rags. It waved now over Winston Churchill’s head.