Sea Fever. By A. H. Rasmussen. (Con- stable. 12s. 6d.)
STORIES of little boys who run away to sea have been told many times before, but seldom more agreeably than in Sea Fever. At fourteen, when he persuaded his family to grant his one ambition, Mr. Rasmussen was a weak consumptive child whom the doctors gave six months to live. It was a courageous father who paid the passage from Oslo to South Shields, scarcely hoping to see his son again ; but the son was obstinate, long- suffering and stout of heart. During his first grim experiences, running Tyne coal to the Thames in a coasting brigantine half a century ago, a tenacious spirit just contrived to compensate for frailty of body, and the sea soon rewarded his faithfulness by curing him. In a few months he had grown by inches. For six more years he sailed in vessels of all rigs and sizes to many places, and survived all the perils of the sea, includ- ing a fearsome shipwreck in a winter gale on Chesil Beach. Then, aged twenty, he sud- denly abandoned the sea for life ashore. For one in whose blood the " sea fever " ran so strongly, this unexplained decision seems hardly the perfect happy ending, but Mr. Rasmussen concludes his slight but pleasant book with it, only hinting that more seafar- ing and another shipwreck lay in store for him much later in his life. G. P. G.
Previous page
