Having drunk my fill, I set out for the hills, among which I hoped to find some hiding-place, and as it became broad daylight I entered a small grove of trees which grew on the side of a deep ravine.  Here I resolved to wait till dusk.  I had one consolation:  no one in the world knew where I was—­I did not know myself.  It was now four o’clock.  Fourteen hours lay between me and the night.  My impatience to proceed, while I was still strong, doubled their length.  At first it was terribly cold, but by degrees the sun gained power, and by ten o’clock the heat was oppressive.  My sole companion was a gigantic vulture, who manifested an extravagant interest in my condition, and made hideous and ominous gurglings from time to time.  From my lofty position I commanded a view of the whole valley.  A little tin-roofed town lay three miles to the westward.  Scattered farmsteads, each with a clump of trees, relieved the monotony of the undulating ground.  At the foot of the hill stood a Kaffir kraal, and the figures of its inhabitants dotted the patches of cultivation or surrounded the droves of goats and cows which fed on the pasture.  The railway ran through the middle of the valley, and I could watch the passage of the various trains.  I counted four passing each way, and from this I drew the conclusion that the same number would run by night.  I marked a steep gradient up which they climbed very slowly, and determined at nightfall to make another attempt to board one of these.  During the day I ate one slab of chocolate, which, with the heat, produced a violent thirst.  The pool was hardly half a mile away, but I dared not leave the shelter of the little wood, for I could see the figures of white men riding or walking occasionally across the valley, and once a Boer came and fired two shots at birds close to my hiding-place.  But no one discovered me.

The elation and the excitement of the previous night had burnt away, and a chilling reaction followed.  I was very hungry, for I had had no dinner before starting, and chocolate, though it sustains, does not satisfy.  I had scarcely slept, but yet my heart beat so fiercely and I was so nervous and perplexed about the future that I could not rest.  I thought of all the chances that lay against me; I dreaded and detested more than words can express the prospect of being caught and dragged back to Pretoria.  I do not mean that I would rather have died than have been retaken, but I have often feared death for much less.  I found no comfort in any of the philosophical ideas which some men parade in their hours of ease and strength and safety.  They seemed only fair-weather friends.  I realised with awful force that no exercise of my own feeble wit and strength could save me from my enemies, and that without the assistance of that High Power which interferes in the eternal sequence of causes and effects more often than we are always prone to admit, I could never succeed.  I prayed long and earnestly for help and guidance.  My prayer, as it seems to me, was swiftly and wonderfully answered, I cannot now relate the strange circumstances which followed, and which changed my nearly hopeless position into one of superior advantage.  But after the war is over I shall hope to lengthen this account, and so remarkable will the addition be that I cannot believe the reader will complain.