6 FEBRUARY 1926, Page 29

FAIR WINDS AND FOUL. By Frederick Parry. (Martin Hopkinson and

Co. 10s. 6d.)

HERE are hell's hatches let loose, with knives and belaying pins and fists and boots freely used as weapons of offence: This is the yarn of a youngster who went to sea as apprentice and finished bucko mate of a Yankee packet. The crew were a lot of roughs slung on board, dead or fighting drunk, whooliad to be man-handled to get the ship under way. They fought a dead " muzzier " off Cape Horn, making and shortening sail for twenty-three days, with the galley fire out, clothes and bedding soaked, before they drove her round Cape Stiff in the teeth of the winds and seas. These yarns are full of the rougher side of the sea. Some are brutal but all are very real.