But before doing so he carefully prepared a tale which, although
most improbable, he hoped might still conceal his identity and aid
him to escape by train across the border.

One night after days of wandering he found himself on the
outskirts of a little village near the boundary line of the Transvaal
and Portuguese territory. Utterly unable to proceed further, he
crawled to the nearest zinc-roofed shack, and, fully prepared to
surrender, knocked at the door. It was opened by a rough-looking,
bearded giant, the first white man to whom in many days Churchill
had dared address himself.

To him, without hope, he feebly stammered forth the speech he
had rehearsed. The man listened with every outward mark of
disbelief. At Churchill himself he stared with open suspicion.
Suddenly he seized the boy by the shoulder, drew him inside the
hut, and barred the door.

"You needn't lie to me," he said. "You are Winston Churchill, and
I--am the only Englishman in this village."

The rest of the adventure was comparatively easy. The next night
his friend in need, an engineer named Howard, smuggled Churchill
Into a freight-car, and hid him under sacks of some soft
merchandise.

At Komatie-Poort, the station on the border, for eighteen hours the
car in which Churchill lay concealed was left in the sun on a
siding, and before it again started it was searched, but the man who