NOVELS.
A TARPAULIN MUSTER.*
THE number and excellence of contemporary writers who deal with the sea and seafaring life is certainly one of the most encouraging features of modern fiction. Indeed, one has only to mention the names of such writers as Mr. Bullen, Mr. Connolly (the author of The Seinen), Mr. Conrad, Mr. Cutcliffe Ilyne, Mr. Basil Lubbock, Mr. Clark Russell, Mr. W. W.
Jacobs, and Major Drury to indicate the variety and high quality of the work which is being done in this field. Mr.
Masefield cannot be regarded as a newcomer. He has already written much and vigorously in prose and verse on the realities of sea-life. But in his new volume—a collection of short stories and sketches, most of which appeared in the columns of the Manchester Guardian—he challenges notice on a higher plane as a sea-folk-lorist (if we may be allowed the barbarous expression) and an interpreter of sea-magic; and, though the quality of his work is unequal, at its best it is very fine indeed. The glory of a tropical sunrise and the majestic beauty of a sailing-ship are familiar themes, but they have not often been described with greater charm or enthuaiaam than in the sketch headed "A Memory" "I was at sea in a sailing ship, walking up and down the leo side of the poop, keeping the time, and striking the bell at each half-hour. It was early in the morning watch, a little after four in the morning. We were in the tropics, not very far from the Doldrums, in the last of the Trades. We were sailing slowly, making perhaps some three or four knots an hour under all sail. The dawn was in the sky to leeward of us, full of wonderful colour, full of embers and fire, changing the heaven, smouldering and burning, breaking out into bloody patches, fading into faint gold, into grey, into a darkness like smoke. There was a haze on the sea, very white and light, moving and settling. Dew was dripping from the sails, from the ropes, from the eaves of the charthouse. The decks shone with dew. In the half-light of the dusk, the binnacle lamps burnt pale and strangely. There was a red patch forward, in the water and on the mist, where the sidelight burned. The men were moving to and fro on the deck below me, walking slowly in couples, one of them singing softly, others quietly talking. They had not settled down to sleep since the muster, because they were expecting the morning 'coffee,' then brewing in the galley. The galley funnel sent trails of sparks over to leeward, and now and then the cook passed to the ship's side to empty ashes into the sea. It was a scene common enough. The same pageant was played before me every other day, whenever I had the morning watch. There was the sunrise and the dewy decks, the sails dripping, and the men shuffling about along the deck. But on this particular day the common scenes and events were charged with meaning as though they were the initiation to a mystery, the music playing before a pageant. It may have been the mist, which made everything unreal and uncertain, especially in the twilight, with the strange glow coming through it from the dawn. I remember that a block made a soft melancholy piping noise in the mizzen rigging as though a bird had awakened upon a branch, and the noise, though common enough, made everything beautiful, just as a little touch of colour will set off a sombre picture and give a value to each tint. Then the ball of the sun came out of the sea in a mass of blood and fire, spreading streamers of gold and rose along the edges of the clouds to the mid-heaven. As he climbed from the water, and the last stars paled, the haze lifted and died. Its last shadows moved away from the sea like grey deer going to new pasture, and as they went, the look-out gave a bail of a ship being to windward of us. When I saw her first there was a smoke of mist about her as high as her foreyard. Her topsails and flying kites had a faint glow upon them where the dawn caught them. Then the mist rolled away from her, so that we could see her hull and the glimmer of the red sidelight as it was hoisted inboard. She was rolling slightly, tracing an arc against the heaven, and as I watched her the glow upon her deepened, till every sail she wore burned rosily like an _opal turned to the sun, like a fiery jewel. She was radiant, she was of an immortal beauty, that swaying, delicate clipper. Coming as she came, out of the mist into the dawn, she was like a spirit, like an intellectual presence. Her hull glowed, her rails glowed; there WES colour upon the boats and tackling. She was a lofty ship (with skysails and royal staysails), and it was wonderful to watch her, blushing in the sun, swaying and curveting. She was alive with a more than mortal life. One thought that she would speak in some strange language or break out into a music which would express the sea and that great flower in the sky. She came trembling down tons, rising up high and plunging; showing the red lead below her water-line ; then diving down till the smother bubbled over her hawseholes. She bowed and curveted; the light caught the skylights on the poop ; she gleamed and sparkled ; she shook the sea from her as she rose. There was no man aboard of us but was filled with the beauty of that ship. I think they would have cheered her had she been a little nearer to us ; but, as it was, we ran up our flags in answer to her, adding our position and comparing ourehronometers, then dipping our ensigns and standing away. For some minutes I watched her, as I made up the flags before putting them back in their cupboard. The old mate limped up to me, and spat and swore. 'That's one of the beautiful sights of the world,' he said. 'That, and a cornfield, and a woman with her child. It's beauty and strength. flow would you like to have one of them skysails round your neck ?' I gave him some answer, and continued to watch her, till the beautiful, precise hull, with all its lovely detail, bad beceree blurred to leeward, where the sun was now marching in triumph, the helm of a golden warrior plumed in cirrus."
It is in such passages—there is another in the study entitled "Being Ashore "—that Mr. Masefield is at his best. As a mere tour de force there is nothing better than "A White Night,"—a singularly effective illustration of the fact that scenes in themselves unimportant, but in which strange atmospheric conditions play a notable part, impress themselves vividly on the mind and recur, suddenly and • unexpectedly, "so clearly outlined, and in such strong light," that it is as though the act was being played before one on a lighted stage. Mr. Hasefield, however, is a writer of many moods. Some of his chapters, like, that on "Ghosts," are merely a budget of recorded observations. In others he gives us sailors' yarns—grimly humorous or extravagantly bombastic, for there is such a thing as the acute gloriosus—faithfuliy reproducing the racy lingo of the narrator. Of these we may specially single out the admirable and instructive tale of "Ambitious Jimmy Hicks," the young man who fell a victim to trop de zZle. He was always "doing something: always doing more than his piece." "On Growing Old" suggests comparisons with Hr. Conrad's Youth. -To our way of thinking, the least impressive piece in the collection is the opening study of the young poet who, distrusting his power of satisfying the demands of a capricious beauty, suddenly abandoned a life of cloistml seclusion, went out into the world to acquire "a decisive and manly style," and returned to find that lie had misjudged his real gift and lost his opportunity. It is a graceful allegory, but Hr. Masefield is more at borne in the fo'c's'le than in the boudoir. In conclusion, let us congratulate him on the finished art with which he has set before us a number of charming Irish fah7.stories ; realising, as so few writers do, that it is not by laborious efforts to reproduce pronunciation with phonographic accuracy, but by giving the right turn of phrase, that the true essence and spirit of the Anglo-Irish dialect are communicated. the hiding of a Jaeobiteleader as to make the staunchest Whig rejoice in his ultimate esoape from his enemies. "From the Heart of the Storm" is an extremely thrilling account of the bursting of a hog; and all the stories are full of the feeling Of "the wind, on the hill" and the wild life of the moors. "The Sexton's Tale" 'cannot be recommended to nervous readers at night. It is one of the most eerie ghost stories that have been invented for some time. Readers who are tired of stories of* the prosaic life of to-day, and who like a breath of the bracing wind of the North combined with romantic adventures, are strongly advised to send for Windover Tales.
The Message. By A. J. Dawson. (E: Grant Richards. es.)-eie Message is a volume of the familiar "Battle of Dorking" type, and, although we cannot approve of Mr. Dawson's fiscal views, it contains on many points very Sound advice to the people of England. At the same time, as in all thee° books, it is unfortunate that the name of a Power with which England is at peace should be introduced as that of the invading enemy. If Mr. Dawson's plot is to be accepted, it may be questioned whether, after the German occupation of England, any opportunity would have been left by the conquerors for the revival which the people of Britain effect. And surely one of two things would have happened,—either, in the first instance, the British Fleet would have sustained a far more crushing defeat than in Mr. Dawson'a pages before the occupation could have been complete, or, supposing that by some miracle so large a portion of the Navy had survived the German conquest, the conquerors would not have allowed so magnificent a force to be maintained by the conquered country in fighting trim. However, Mr. Dawson's idea in writing the book is probably to point out what he conceives to be the dangerous moral state of the English nation, rather than to evolve credible military or naval incidents. The whole book moves briskly, and is exciting reading, although in the earlier part anything but exhilarating.
READABLE Norsts.—The Seven Watchmen. By Mary Dewett (The Century Press. 4s. ecl.)A modern story of impersonation, complicated by the old device of a change of babies in infancy. The plot is decidedly ingenions.—His Wife's Revenge. By George R. Sims. (Chatto and Windns. 23. 61.9—This story relates how a convict escapes from penal servitude and succeeds to a baronetcy. Fortunately he comes to a bad end, and leaves the road clear for his virtuous Younger brother—Capt win Kirke Webbe. By F. W. Hayes. (Hutchinson anti Co. es.)--A story of privateering at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, very brisk and well contrived. —The Frozen Venus. By H. L. Lander. (Cassell and Co. es.) —The scene is laid first in an American mining camp, then in England ; the title is not good enough for the story.—The Fighters. By Lady Violet Neville. (Chapman and Hall. 6s.)—A story of the Peninsular War. —A Yankee Napoleon. By John Macpherson. (John Long. es.)—The subject is what the United States will come to under the rule of the "Trusts."—The Whit; Hand and the Black. By Bertram Dfitford. (Same publisher and price.)—A writer who knows his subject writes shoat the recent rising in Natal.
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