Authors second work while he was a Reuters correspondent in South Africa.
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (April 1, 1875 – February 10, 1932) was an English crime writer, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and numerous articles in newspapers and journals...Before becoming a premier mystery writer, the young Edgar Wallace was a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps who wrote poetry in a Kipling like s tyle of his experiences in the Boer war. This, hi s second book, is very scarce

...Edgar enlisted in the Infantry preparatory to leaving for South Africa.

However Edgar found Army life unappealing. Soldiering was hard on his feet and ears, and indeed by the time he died was well-known for never partaking in any physical exercise (which probably contributed to his early death). He wangled a transfer to the Royal Army Medical Corps, which was less arduous but more unpleasant, and so transferred again to the Press Corps, where at last he found his metier.

By 1898, he was a war correspondent for the Daily Mail in the Boer War, as well as a poet/columnist for various periodicals - a similar sequence to that which P G Wodehouse would experience a couple of years later. He also met the author and poet Rudyard Kipling whom he greatly admired..."
--Wikipedia