After Reilly's release, his father told him that his mother was dead and that his biological father was her Jewish doctor Mikhail A. Rosenblum. Distraught by this news, he faked his death in Odessa harbor and stowed away aboard a British ship bound for South America. In Brazil, he adopted the name Pedro and worked odd jobs as a dock worker, a road mender, a plantation laborer, and a cook for a British intelligence expedition in 1895. He allegedly saved both the expedition and the life of Major Charles Fothergill when hostile natives attacked them. Rosenblum seized a British officer's pistol and killed the attackers with expert marksmanship. Fothergill rewarded his bravery with 1,500 pounds sterling, a British passport, and passage to Britain, where Pedro became Sidney Rosenblum.