Staring at the Boer as he moved closer, rifle at the ready, poised to shoot should he make the slightest move to escape, Churchill knew that he had run out of options. He could be killed, or he could be captured. "Death stood before me," he wrote, "grim sullen Death without his light-hearted companion, Chance." The thought of surrender sickened him, but in this moment of fury, frustration and despair, the words of Napoleon, whom he had long studied and admired, came to him: "When one is alone and unarmed, a surrender may be pardoned." Standing before the man who was now his captor, Churchill raised his hands in the air.
(from Hero of the Empire, by Cancide Millard)
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