NOVELS.
THE BRASSBOUNDER.*
THERE is no vocation of the British race which is written about with such competence and artistry as that of the sailor. Possibly Stevenson is to be counted the master of the cult, but there have been writers since him who have handled the technology of the sea with more confidence and deeper knowledge. He was never quite at his ease when navigating anything more intricate than a schooner, and for the rest he depended on a marine philosophy which he invented, and above all on his incomparable style. Mr. Conrad belongs to a quite different class of the cult; he was a sailor himself, and even those of his descriptions which fall far short of Stevenson's grace have an air of authenticity, as of the man who can say:—" I saw that very thing happen myself. When the wind hauled ahead suddenly after that heavy blow in which we had been pooped three times, it was then that that baffling cross sea which I have just told you about came up, and it was then that our best helmsman was so puzzled that he let on board a sea which ought not by rights to have touched us. And that is why," &c., &c. The whole cult has the courage of its literary convictions, and austerely " keeps things separate," as Mr. Kipling's Captains Courageous required that the ex-farmer should do when he was cod- fishing. It was thought the height of impropriety that he should even mention hay and sheep, and similarly the sea- writers of to-day discard every one of the irrelevances which Captain Marryat and, say, Mr. Clark Ruisell freely permitted themselves. Mr. Lubbock and Mr. Noble concentrate a], their light on the elemental struggle between man and hie fate, and both have produced some sea-pieces of undeniable grandeur and fury. Mr. Bullen is different, again ; he is explanatory. Mr. Masefield, yet again, is drawn by brilliant phantoms, many of them of another age.
Mr. David Bone has, it will be seen, a tough company of competitors in launching himself as a sea-writer, but he need not fear greatly even the most stringent comparisons. His work belongs to the " gem-room " of the sea-picture gallery. He gives us here a homogeneous series of sketches, each complete in itself, but in essence related to its fellows. Of their kind we know nothing better. We do not say that every reader will be thrilled as we were by some of the peripaies in the experiences of the brassbounder (or premium- paying apprentice) who goes round the Horn to San Francisco in a three-thousand-ton barque, because we are not at all sure that our sea-loving population does not bestow most of its love on the sea by proxy. But we do say that those who are drawn to the sea by instinct will find in this book poetry, art, and knowledge expressed in nautical terms. Of course every sailor in a " wind-jammer " grumbles at his hard lot, but no true sailor is kept away from the sea by a democratic dislike of a floating despotism or by weevils in his biscuits. The brassbounder of Mr. Bone's stories tells of the "rotten pride" which prevents him from fleeing from a grisly life. But of course it is not only rotten pride. On p. 2 Mr. Bone lets fall a casual remark which explains much better what takes men of his temperament to the sea. He speaks of driving in a cab in Glasgow to join his ship by the direct road that leads by Bath Street, Finnieston, and Cape Horn to San Francisco. The roads of our island all end in the sea, and the sea because it is no road is all roads. It leads everywhere. That thought is bound to hold captive for life the imaginations of those who apprehend it. And there is another reason why Mr. David Bone must have gone to sea,— because he drew the illustrations for this book. He does not draw like his distinguished brother, Mr. Muirhead Bone, but his pictures are curiously satisfying nevertheless.
• The Brasabounder. By David W. Bone. With Illustrations by the Author. London : Duckworth and Co. [6.s.]
With an effort which is visible in every line, he wins violently through to the expression of the romance which for him has never departed from a sailing ship. We are thinking in par- ticular of the illustration entitled "A Trick at the Wheel," which reminds one of Holman Hunt's picture. It is the same artist speaking through another medium in these lines which describe washing decks :—
"There is grace in the steady throwing of the water—the brimming bucket poised for the throw, left foot cocked a few inches above the deck, the balance, and the sweeping half-circle with the limpid water pouring strongly and evenly over the planking; then the recovery, and the quick half-turn to pass the empty bucket and receive a full—a figure for a stately dance !"
Mr. Bone handles his Dago, Dutch, Scotch, and Welsh vernacular extremely well, and he has, moreover, that dry
and delicate humour which we fear causes some Englishmen to suppose that the Scotch are humourless. As for the excitements, we would mention two in particular. One is the embaying of the ship in drifting ice, and the other the frantic efforts of the ship to claw off a lee shore in the night. The plausible fool of a pilot who has brought her into this trap turns from his supercilious confidence to the pitifully heroic remedies of panic, and recommends a desperate run through a narrow channel before the wind. The " Old Man" deliberately, yet with no foolhardy assurance, prefers to back the ability of his ship to work to windward against all the feckless local know- ledge of his adviser. And he stands there watching as the ship eats her way forward inch by inch; he pats the tail ail and calls on her indifferently with terms of endearment and blasphemy. It is a fine scene,—the finest, we think, in the book, for those who understand just what it means.
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