By Tammers Camp Fires. — 



By K. and Hesketh Prichard. 

 TAMMERS AND THE FALSE DESPATCH. 



I. 



NSHIE Tammers' five feet 

 eight inches of height and 

 twelve and • a half stone of 

 weight there beat, some said, 

 the biggest heart in Africa. 

 From one point of view this 

 was an exaggeration, for a certain line exists 

 after which courage recedes or extends into 

 rashness, and Martin Tammers was not by 

 temperament, still less by training, a rash 

 man. Yet once he had made up his mind 

 and weighed his chances, it is a common- 

 place to say that nothing save death could 

 stop him. 



At the time of which I write some tribal 

 trouble had broken out in one of our depen- 

 dencies in North -East Africa. Tammers' 

 services had been requisitioned for the war 

 which followed : a little by-war, so to speak, 

 but likely to have far-reaching results. I 

 accompanied him to the sphere of activity, 

 and at the moment my story opens some 

 weeks had already been spent in drilling 

 levies, collecting transport, and arranging 

 the hundred and one other necessary 

 matters. 



At last, when the right season came, we 

 started on our march into the country, a 

 great serpent of men in which the centuries 

 met. Camel corps formed its head ; Maxims, 

 spearmen, twentieth-century riflemen, bow- 

 men carrying oryx-hide shields made up its 

 body, tailing away into a vast number of 

 carriers and a 



herd of camels ' 



to feed the new 

 levies. 



With this mixed 

 company march- 

 ed Tammers, and 

 it was he to all 

 practical pur- 

 poses who struck 

 the first blow of 

 the campaign. 

 His duties in 

 making recon- 

 naissance kept 

 him constantly 

 ahead of the 

 troops, and he 

 soon established 

 the fact that the 



enemy were gathering in quite unexpected 

 force in front of us, falling back as we 

 advanced as though luring us on. 



In course of time the division, with its 

 strange commingling of elements, reached the 

 border of a waterless desert, the crossing of 

 which was the crux of the campaign. The 

 General had spent many hours studying his 

 advance, but every plan that homed under 

 his thinning hair was balked by the diffi- 

 culties of that yellowish-brown belt of parched 

 land, over which he well knew the slow- 

 moving main body would travel at terrible 

 disadvantage, exposed to the swift charges of 

 the enemy. Such, in reality, would be our 

 position while we traversed the desert region. 

 Once we gained the well -watered country on 

 the farther side the chances of success would 

 swing over to our side, but attack in the 

 desert might mean annihilation. 



At this juncture, as Tammers and I 

 were riding back to camp after making a 

 reconnaissance some five miles ahead, and 

 finding a halting - place which the Emir's 

 soldiery had not long vacated, an officer 

 on a small pony galloped up to us. The 

 General had sent for Tammers. 



In a very few minutes the scout stood 

 under the awning of the General's tent, wait- 

 ing for orders and looking down at an open 

 map, on which the present camp of our 

 troops was marked by one point of a pair of 

 compasses. This point touched the edge of 

 the yellow band that represented the desert. 



"an OFFICFU ON A SMALL PONY GALLOPED UP TO US. 



Copyright, by Georg;e Newnes, Limite(3, 



