5 x Boers Escape to Russian Ship

Apparently, nothing of importance happened until the ship reached Aden, here two British Officers boarded the ship requesting to see the captain. They produced two cablegrams, one from the Ceylon Government, the other from the Russian Consul, indicating that five Boer prisoners-of-war bad escaped and that there was reason to believe they were either on board the Russian or the French vessel that had left Colombo before daybreak on the 14th of January.

The captain had made it his business not to contact the escapees, and vehemently pronounced he had not seen any Boer runaways aboard. An insistent demand was made for a search, but who would have thought to look into one of the funnels (the furnaces connected to it were not being used) for five men who had sat precariously, in a fearfully cramped position, on an iron ladder for six hours!Their next stop, was an international port. Nevertheless, on the advice of the officers, they remained on board, falling in with a plan that they should keep to the ship until they got to Russia, and that they should then make their way across Europe to Holland and from there back to South Africa.