Baffling the Blockade. By J. Macdonald Oxley. (Nelson and Sons.)—This
is the best story of adventure that the author has yet produced. It is pure adventure, and we have no sketches or portraits of either Northern or Southern people, if we except the typical New Englander, the pilot Hauk Thayer ; but the excite- ment of running the blockade is kept up from the first page to the last. Charleston is naturally the base of operations, and from Charleston the Greyhound' makes several brilliant dashes ; she is only once caught, but is almost immediately rescued by a Con- federate privateer, and her pilot, a clever New Englander, again and again saves his vessel and his employer by "the skin of his teeth." The story is well written, and is all the more readable in that no attempt at fine writing is made; but the narrative throughout is vigorous and clear, and the dialogue crisp, and the excitement culminates when the Sinclair family make their final dash out of the doomed Charleston. A genuine boy could not have a better story than this, and older people will be fascinated by its " go."
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