FICTION.
RED BOB OF THE BISMARCKS.0 WHEN a writer's permanent address is Port Moresby, Papua, there is at least presumptive evidence that he—or she, as it happens to be in this case—knows something about New Guinea. As a matter of fact, Miss Beatrice Grimshaw has given several proofs already that she knows a great deal about that huge and amazing island, and we turn to her new book with an expectation that she has never yet disappointed for fresh lights on that region of magic and mystery. The story begins in the Old Country, and it begins in the right adven- turous spirit. Paul Corbet, the son of a Liverpool merchant, showed a certain lack of natural affection in running sway to sea, but it must be admitted that he had considerable provocation. He was " fed up" with office work ; he was a fighting-man, a fine boxer, and a dead shot, and he had—alone of his family— the roving instinct in his blood. So when the opportunity offered of changing places with the valet of the moat romantic explorer of the time he jumped at it, fought for it, and won. It was not all plain sailing, for Vincent Gore, the explorer, had to be convinced that Paul was in earnest and that he was the man he wanted, It was at the outset an arduous appren- ticeship, but Paul stood the test. He was a good linguist as well as a man of his hands, and in a very short time the valet was merged in the secretary, with a salary instead of wages. Paul was wanting in tact and diplomacy; he was always spoiling for a fight; but in one respect be proved immensely useful to his chief. Vincent Gore was a most formidable and adamantine person, but he bad one weakness. He was paralysed by the sight of a petticoat, and found in his lieutenant an invaluable aid in keeping lionizers at bay.
There are two plots in the story; one concerned with a great treasure hunt, in which Gore is the leading spirit, and the other romantic, in which Paul Oorbet is hero and a young lady named Isola Ravenna is heroine. They met on the hillside on the island of Banda in the Malay Archipelago, and Paul, who had forsworn the joys of domestic life, instantaneously recanted his heresy. Naturally he was delighted to find that this beautiful young oread was a fellow-passenger on the steamer that took them to New Guinea ; but his delight was soon damped by the terrible discovery that she was married to a German, and his anguish was only enhanced by the further discovery who the German was. This, be it remembered, was before the war; but as Gore's objective was German New Guinea, Miss Grimshaw has a good deal to say— based on first-hand observation—on German colonial methods, and the unfriendly attitude of German settlers and officials towards British visitors. The case of the
• 244 Bali j the Btarnarcks. By Beatrice Grimshaw. London: Hurst and Blassett. Loa]
heroine was doubly unfortunate. It was bad enough to be married to an elderly man on his deathbed to secure her position and that of her parents ; it was worse when the dying man miraculously recovered, went off to New Guinea, and returned, unrecognized, to claim his bride under another name. How Isola ran away from her husband and, disguised se a Malay youth. contrived to board Gore's little schooner when he was just putting off on his treasure hunt ; bow the hoard of the Dutchman was located; how the trio fared on their trip in perilous seas forlorn with a crew of Papuan cannibals who mutinied and wrecked the schooner ; how the war broke out and Germany lost her colonies, and Paul won his bride—all this is told in Miss Griinshaw's vigorous, forthright manner.
It is interesting, especially as Malaya comes into the story, to contrast her method with that of Mr. Conrad. Nothing could be more dissimilar, yet they are at least alike in having both felt the magic and glamour of the East. In the ease of New Guinea and the surrounding islands, there is often something violent and even sinister about its enchantment, and this quality is finely conveyed in the picture of Rabaul, the capital of Kaiser Wilhelms Land, on the great island which had once been New Ireland, bat had become Neu Pommern when
Gore and Paul Oorbet put in there t-
" It is always described as a spot of surpassing loveliness. There may be times when it deserves such praise, but on the evening when the -Visalia steamed in, it struck me as the wickedest-looking spot between Capricorn and Cancer, The town lies in the hollow of an old volcano crater. walled with heavy forests. It is held tight in the elbow-curve of the bay, so that not a breath of Heaven's fresh outer air from the sea can visit it. From the great black finger of the jetty that runs pointing out to sea, as if in silent warning of unseen dangers on the land, the streets run straight and narrow, thickly overhung with boulevarding of tropic trees—flamboyant, with its drips of blood-coloured flowers; mango, hanging heavy-scented fruit beneath a gloomy cave of leafage; casuarina, the grave-tree of the Pacific, that mourns with every faintest stir of breeze, like an &ellen harp set on a tomb. . . . There are rows of handsome offices and houses, and stores, and Government buildings, standing on Portiere of white or black legs, like creeping things. There is a heavy scent in the air, of gums and woods and foliage, and wet, raw earth, and rain . . . it is almost always raining let Rabaul, and the rain is always warm, and the ground steams under the sun when the rain is over. Outside the town, in the oily waters of the bay—that bay that is never moved by any storm, for the harbourage of Rabaul is the pride of the Bismaraks —stand up two dagger-shaped islands, like some strange form of beacon. Do you wish to read their warning P Glance to the right of them, and you will see an ugly sight : a low, mischievous- looking crater, with its lip broken down towards the sea ; a crater that lies like an ulcer on the face of the land, crusted with livid yellow and death-grey among the springing green. Within the memory of men no older than Red Bob that orator had spat out a low island or two and altered all the harbour levels; in that year the sea turned hot and the fish died, and were thrown up au the land. There was no settlement in fiimpsonshafen then, nor in the days further back when the great beacon islands were cast out. But there are those who say that no settlement should ever have been put there, and prophesy the fate of Pompeii and St. Pierre for Rabaul—one of these days."
The characterization is spirited; perhaps the most artistic thing in this way is the portrait of the tiresome, persistent, tenacious governess, who came so near capturing the explorer, for Gore was an Ulysses with the heel of Achilles—full of wiles and resource, yet unable to detach himself from the most unattractive of sirens.
But, when all is said and done, the deepest impression is created, not by the characters of the plot, but by the Papuan landscape—the spell of New Guinea, with her sunsets like the Judgment Day, at once beautiful and terrible.
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