After three nights Churchill was exhausted, hungry and thirsty and incapable of going much further. He decided to make for a house whose lights he could see in the distance. Not knowing whether the house was occupied by a Briton or a Boer; a friend or foe, he knocked on the door to be greeted by John Howard, the manager of the Transvaal and Delagoa Bay Colliery. This by sheer good fortune was the only friendly house in the neighbourhood. Howard hid Churchill down the mine until arrangements could be made to smuggle him over the border even though he would be guilty of treason for harbouring him.