5 SEPTEMBER 1908, Page 25

The Log of a Sailor Man. By W. Brooke. (The

Century Press. 6s.)—The publisher's note that the author of this book is a mate in a steamship "plying between London and Australia" lends a decided interest to the volume. It is quite obvious that Mr. Brooke writes of that which he knows, and that his descriptions of life on board a merchantman are true. The most interesting of the little sketches—for the different chapters, being complete in themselves, are really a series of sketches—are perhaps "Shanghaied" and " Misunderstood," but all the stories contain realistic pictures of life at sea.