The train started slowly, but gathered speed sooner than I had expected.  The flaring lights drew swiftly near.  The rattle grew into a roar.  The dark mass hung for a second above me.  The engine-driver silhouetted against his furnace glow, the black profile of the engine, the clouds of steam rushed past.  Then I hurled myself on the trucks, clutched at something, missed, clutched again, missed again, grasped some sort of hand-hold, was swung off my feet—­my toes bumping on the line, and with a struggle seated myself on the couplings of the fifth truck from the front of the train.  It was a goods train, and the trucks were full of sacks, soft sacks covered with coal dust.  I crawled on top and burrowed in among them.  In five minutes I was completely buried.  The sacks were warm and comfortable.  Perhaps the engine-driver had seen me rush up to the train and would give the alarm at the next station:  on the other hand, perhaps not.  Where was the train going to?  Where would it be unloaded?  Would it be searched?  Was it on the Delagoa Bay line?  What should I do in the morning?  Ah, never mind that.  Sufficient for the day was the luck thereof.  Fresh plans for fresh contingencies.  I resolved to sleep, nor can I imagine a more pleasing lullaby than the clatter of the train that carries you at twenty miles an hour away from the enemy’s capital.

How long I slept I do not know, but I woke up suddenly with all feelings of exhilaration gone, and only the consciousness of oppressive difficulties heavy on me.  I must leave the train before daybreak, so that I could drink at a pool and find some hiding-place while it was still dark.  Another night I would board another train.  I crawled from my cosy hiding-place among the sacks and sat again on the couplings.  The train was running at a fair speed, but I felt it was time to leave it.  I took hold of the iron handle at the back of the truck, pulled strongly with my left hand, and sprang.  My feet struck the ground in two gigantic strides, and the next instant I was sprawling in the ditch, considerably shaken but unhurt.  The train, my faithful ally of the night, hurried on its journey.

It was still dark.  I was in the middle of a wide valley, surrounded by low hills, and carpeted with high grass drenched in dew.  I searched for water in the nearest gully, and soon found a clear pool.  I was very thirsty, but long after I had quenched my thirst I continued to drink, that I might have sufficient for the whole day.

Presently the dawn began to break, and the sky to the east grew yellow and red, slashed across with heavy black clouds.  I saw with relief that the railway ran steadily towards the sunrise.  I had taken the right line, after all.