For Boer marksmen with Mausers and pompoms, a wrecked
railroad train at thirteen hundred yards was as easy a bull's-eye as
the hands of the first baseman to the pitcher, and while the engine
butted and snorted and the men with their bare bands tore at the
massive beams of the freight-car, the bullets and shells beat about
them.

"I have had in the last four years many strange and varied
experiences," continues young Churchill, "but nothing was so
thrilling as this; to wait and struggle among these clanging,
rending iron boxes, with the repeated explosions of the shells, the
noise of the projectiles striking the cars, the hiss as they passed in
the air, the grunting and puffing of the engine--poor, tortured
thing, hammered by at least a dozen shells, any one of which, by
penetrating the boiler, might have made an end of all--the
expectation of destruction as a matter of course, the realization of
powerlessness--all this for seventy minutes by the clock, with only
four inches of twisted iron between danger, captivity, and shame
on one side--and freedom on the other."

The "protected" train had proved a deathtrap, and by the time the
line was clear every fourth man was killed or wounded. Only the
engine, with the more severely wounded heaped in the cab and
clinging to its cow-catcher and foot-rails, made good its escape.
Among those left behind, a Tommy, without authority, raised a
handkerchief on his rifle, and the Boers instantly ceased firing and
came galloping forward to accept surrender. There was a general
stampede to escape. Seeing that Lieutenant Franklin was gallantly
trying to hold his men, Churchill, who was safe on the engine,
jumped from it and ran to his assistance. Of what followed, this is