NOVELS.
A NAVAL VOLUNTEER.* As the author of one of the most attractive of the volumes dealing with the war in South Africa, In the Ranks of the C.I.V., Mr. Childers needs no introduction from us. He is now to be congratulated on what we believe to be his first incursion into the region of romance. The Biddle of the Sands is an attractive tale of adventure and mystery at sea, and may be heartily recom- mended to those who are selecting their library for the summer holidays. It will be read to best advantage, indeed, from the deck of a yacht, for its excellent plot is served up with a most refreshing savour of salt. Travellers in Germany will find it very topical, and those few of us especially who select the leafy shores of the Baltic, or the German watering. places in the North Sea, will possibly be tempted into verify- ing its geographical and military disclosures on the spot. To those of us whom an unkind fate retains in London in August the opening chapters at least will offer the selfish consolation afforded by a tale of woe zimilar to our own, and we may even be beguiled by the undoubted vividness with which the later developments are unfolded into imagining ourselves as part of the crew of the Dulcibella?
We confess to considerable hesitation on the point, but on the whole we should class the book as a sensational novel. But it bears upon the face of it such a stamp of extreme probability that we are almost persuaded by Mr. Childers's cunning to take it seriously for what it professes to be, "a record of secret service recently achieved." This in itself speaks volumes for the author's skill in dealing with his material. We are not sure of Mr. Childers's proficiency as a seaman, and have our doubts as to whether he is as much at home with all the technicalities of navigation as he professes to be. (Could a seven-ton yacht be manned in half-a-gale by a single seaman, however expert ? and would it be safe in any circum- stances to leave the tiller in order to shorten sail P) But we are convinced, first, that the author, whether as "passenger" or "crew," has recently taken part in a cruise of the kind he describes off the East Frisian coast ; and secondly, that he has devoted considerable attention to the Continental aspect of that ever-recurring problem, the invasion of England. We repeat that, on the whole, we are disposed to treat The Biddle of. the Sands as romance, but it is romance with a solid groundwork of fact, and it is a book with a purpose.
The author does not lay himself out for the study of character, though the excellent sketch of the "Naval Volunteer" is clearly from the life, and the story of his courtship, which is one of the secondary motives of the tale, fa convincingly real in its comparative insignificance. But as • The Riddle of the Sands. By Erskine Childers, With Maps and Charts. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. [6.0 a sensational novel the story stands in most favourable con- trast to the wildly improbable tales which so often pass under this category. Mr. Childers has done well to cast his first novel in the form of a personal narrative,—it is sober and realistic, and gains greatly in force accordingly. The marine setting is so detailed and so vivid that as an actual diary of an autumn cruise off the East Frisian coast it would repay the reading. It is much to Mr. Childers's credit that he has not allowed his imagination to run riot with his story, and his novel retains that sense of truthful simplicity and convincing freshness which carried one away so capitally in his record of
personal experience with the C.I.V. Battery.
In the interests of our readers we must abstain from dis- closing too much of the plot, the di-noutment of which is skilfully concealed to the end. We must leave them the intellectual treat of discovering with Mr. Carruthers what is the real object of the cruise in which he was at first so mutinous a mariner, and of unravelling with this gentleman and with Mr. Davies the real object of Herr Dollmann's presence at Memmert. Unless they are " slimmer " than we give them credit for, they will guess no faster than Mr. Childers chooses, though they may be led into reading a great deal faster than the intrinsic merits of the novel merit. As a specimen of the lighter touches in the book we commend our readers to the description of Mr. Carruthers's first introduction to Mr. Davies and the Dulcibella.' Mr. Carruthers is a gilded youth from the Foreign Office, where, much against his will, he has been forced to spend August "in being absent for lunch from 12 till 2." He is invited to join an old College friend in a little yachting, and perhaps duck-shooting, in the Baltic. "Yachting" to him conveys an idea of the Solent, "with trim gig and obsequious sailors, orderly snowy decks and basket chairs." He arrives at Flensburg faultlessly attired,
and meets his pal :—
" He wore an old Norfolk jacket, mouldy brown shoes, grey flannel trousers, and an ordinary tweed cap. The hand he gave me was horny and appeared to be stained with paint; the other one which carried a parcel of meat had a bandage on it which would have borne renewal that portmanteau,' he said, slowly measuring it with a doubtful eye. • Never mind, we'll try. You couldn't do with the Gladstone only, I suppose? You see, the dinghy—h'm, and there's the hatchway too' ; he was lost in thought. • Anyhow, let's try. I'm afraid there are no cabs ; but it's quite near, and the porter'll help.' Sickening fore- bodings crept over me, while Davies shouldered my Gladstone, and clutched at the parcels. Aren't your men here?' I asked faintly. Men '—he looked confused. Oh perhaps I ought to have told you, I never have paid hands; it's quite a small boat, you know. I hope you didn't expect luxury. I've managed her single-handed for some time. A man would be no use, and it
horrible nuisance Let's have lunch,' he pursued, as we resumed our way down the fiord. A vision of iced drinks, tempt- ing salads, white napery, and an attentive steward mocked me with past recollections. You'll find a tongue,' said the voice of doom, in the starboard sofa locker ; beer under the floor in the bilge. I'll see her round that buoy, if you wouldn't mind begin- ning.' I obeyed with a bad grace, but the close air and cramped posture must have benumbed my faculties, for I opened the port- side locker, reached down, and grasped a sticky body, which turned out to be a pot of varnish. Recoiling wretchedly, I tried the opposite one, combating the embarrassing edges of the centre- board ease. A medley of damp tins of varied sizes showed in the gloom, exuding a mouldy odour. Faded legends on dissolving paper, like the remnants of old posters on a disused hoarding, spoke of soups, curries, beefs, potted meats, and other hidden delicacies. I picked out a tongue, reimprisoned the odour, and explored for the beer. I regarded my hard-won and ill-favoured pledges of a meal with giddiness and discouragement."
The humour here is bright and realistic, and smacks refresh- ingly of the excellent fooling in Three Men in a Boat.
We must leave Mr. Carruthers to tell his own story of his conversion from a grumbling landlubber into a daring naval adventurer, but in order to give our readers an inkling of the central idea of the book, and as a specimen of the author's racy style in dealing with more serious subjects, we take the following passage :— " It was Davies' conviction that the whole region [the North Sea Coast of Germany] would in war be an ideal hunting ground for small free-lance marauders, and I began to know he was right Follow the parallel of war on land. People your mountains with a daring and resourceful race, who possess an intimate knowledge of every track and bridle path, who operate in small bands, travel light, and move rapidly. See what an immense advantage such guerillas possess over an enemy which clings to beaten tracks, moves in large bodies, slowly, and does not know the country. See how they can not only inflict disasters on a foe who vastly overmatches them in strength, but
can prolong a semi-passive resistance long after all the decisive battles have been fought. The parallel must not be pressed too far; but that this sort of warfare will have its counterpart on the sea is &truth that cannot be questioned. Davies in his enthusiasm set no limits to its importance. The small boat in shallow waters played a mighty rble in his vision of a naval war,. The heavy battle fleets are all very well,' he used to say, 'but if the aides are well matched there might be nothing left of them after a few months of war. They might destroy one another mutually, leaving as nominal conqueror an admiral with scarcely a battle- ship to bless himself with. It's then that the true struggle will set in ; and it's then that-anything that will float will be pressed into the service, and anybody who can steer a boat, knows his waters, and doesn't care the toss of a coin for his life, will have magnificent opportunities. It cuts both ways. What small boats can do in these waters is plain enough; but take our own ease. Say we're beaten on the high semi by a coalition. There's then a risk of starvation or invasion. It's all rot what they talk about instant surrender. We can live on half-rations, recuperate, and build ; but we must have time. Meanwhile our coast and ports are in danger, for the millions we sink in forts and mines won't carry us far. They're fixed—pure passive defence. What you want is boats—mosquitoes with stings—swarms of them—patrol- boats, scout-boats, torpedo-boats ; intelligent irregulars manned by local men, with a pretty free hand to play their own game. And what a splendid game to play ! There are places very like this over there—nothing half so good, but similar—the Mersey estuary, the Dee, the Severn, the Wash, and, best of all, the Thames, with all the Kent, Essex, and Suffolk banks round it. But as for defending our coasts in the way I mean—we've nothing ready—nothing whatsoever. We don't even build or use torpedo-boats. These fast "destroyers" are no good for this work—too long and unmanageable, and most of them too deep. What you want is something strong and simple, of light draught, and with only a spar-torpedo, if it came to that. Tugs, launches, small yachts—anything would do at a pinch, for success would depend on intelligence, not on brute force or complicated mechanism. They'd get wiped out often, but what matter? There'd be tto lack of the right sort of men for them if the thing was organised. But where are the men ? "
We have now, without, we trust, discounting the interest of a capital novel by revealing the "Riddle," conveyed to our readers a sufficient idea of its main outlines to justify our heading to this notice.
Mr. Davies is himself the "Naval Volunteer," one of that numerous class of amateur mariners who, from pure love of the sea, haunt our coasts in holiday-time with small craft of every description. Many of them, like the hero of this book, perform in real life with their tiny craft feats of which a Drake or a Frobisher would not have been ashamed, though it is given to few to hap, like the Mr. Davies of this romance, upon a secret of national importance. After all, we English- then were seamen long before we were statesmen or shopmen or sportsmen, and it would be disastrous indeed if the prairie or the counter had entirely extinguished that good-fellowship with the waves which has produced more " mad" Englishmen than any other field for daring or adventure.
The men, therefore, to whom our author alludes in the paragraph which we have just quoted undoubtedly exist, and the problem is how to render them available for national defence. In his concluding chapter Mr. Childers welcomes the recent decision of the Admiralty to raise a corps of Naval Volunteers, and we join him most heartily in applauding a step which will, we believe, add a most valuable Reserve to the Navy. But just as in organising the national Reserve for the Army, so with the Naval Volunteer it is essential to consider the professional sailor and his amateur auxiliary as different species, with different aptitudes and different requirements, and so as demanding different kinds of training.
Men of the type of Mr. Davies might possibly make good A.B.'s in the Royal Navy with one quarter of the training that the ordinary naval recruit requires. But, like Mr. Childers himself, who was more than an ordinary gunner in South Africa, it is certain that much more can be made of these Naval Volunteers,—if the time they can give is devoted, not to .moulding them• exactly into an inferior imitation of Jack Tar, but to developing to the utmost, and in the interests of national defence, those natural proclivities for seamanship and adventure which take them down to the great waters at all. As giving us a lead as to how the Naval Volunteer might best be employed, the passage we have quoted, and indeed the whole enthusiastic tale, are more than suggestive.
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