"Well," Naudé answered, "I did not know whether you were still in town and alone at home, and we could not risk finding you with visitors. While we were at the gate some of the Military Mounted Police passed and we thought it safer to go for a walk. Unfortunately we walked right into their camp, and before we knew where we were, we were falling over their tent-ropes, and in our hurry to escape from them we found ourselves before the house of the Military Governor, where the sentinels on guard saluted me most respectfully. I can't tell you how glad we were to find you waiting for us when we came back to the gate." The diary shrinks from the attempt to describe the thrilling adventures these men had to relate, their hairbreadth escapes, their hardships, privations, and fatigue.
They sat talking with them far into the night, their hostesses hung on every word, their hearts full of admiration and respect for men so brave, so strong and calm, facing death a thousand times without flinching, looking their troubles philosophically in the face, trusting implicitly in their God.
By degrees they got the story of their entering into the town from them.
It seemed that at this time Pretoria was so well guarded that it was almost impossible for the wiliest of spies to pass through the sentries unobserved, but, after much cautious inspection, one single unguarded spot had been found, the drift of the Aapies River, over which the S.E. railway bridge passed. This drift, which was about twenty feet wide, was so completely fenced in with a network of barbed wire that it was evidently not considered necessary to place sentinels there. By throwing over their parcels first and working away the ground for more than an hour under the barbed wire, the men were able to crawl and wriggle their way through the barrier.
They made it a rule never to clip the wires around the town, because this would betray the route used by them, but out in the veld no wire fences were spared.
When they had removed the worst traces of dust and dirt from their clothes they walked boldly through the streets, Naudé in the uniform of an English officer and Venter and Brenckmann, as his orderlies, dressed in khaki.
They were anxious to get under cover before the full light of day overtook them, but none of them knew where Harmony was, and they actually walked over the lower portion of Harmony's grounds, across the main road and over the Sunnyside bridge, hiding themselves in the thick poplar bushes beside the river. Here three Kaffir police sprang up and saluted Naudé as he passed. But for his uniform, he and his men would have been lost.