FICTION

ADVENTURE OR NOTHING

IT was a fine vehicle for his genius that Mr. Masefleld discovered when he wrote Sard Harker. Construction, plot, verisimilitude and all the sober virtues went by the board in order that he might be free for a boyish exuberance of imagination, and crowd as much adventure into his pages as • he physically could. Two things only he retained to set off his heroisms and Odysseys and struggles and hair-

breadth escapes-a beautifully pure and vivid use of English and a shrewd and strong characterization.

Such is his new novel, Odtaa ; even looser in construction

and more irresponsibly exciting. Perhaps the tale is a wicked parody of Conrad-for Conrad gave us exactly the

same shadowy and incredible heroine in The Arrow of Gold. Perhaps Mr. Masefleld is trying us out to see how pre-

posterously wild a story we will accept from him. But whatever subtleties may have been present to his mind, he obviously wrote in the highest spirits, gave rein to fancy and out-Ballantyned Marryat, Henty and Defoe.

With a few introductory pages of the history and geography of Santa Barbara, a rather vaguely South American country, Mr. Masefleld plunges his readers into a tumult of political rivalries there about the year 1887. A:fiend incarnate, the president Lopez, who frequented shambles in order to enjoy the colour of blood, broods like a thundercloud over the land. And into an atmosphere ripe for carnage and strife comes an English lad of eighteen, Highworth Ridden, sent abroad by his squire father to learn sense because he loved engines better than_ horseflesh.

Before Hi has been in the country many hours he is in the thick of the prevalent troubles. He has fallen extremely in love with the equisite Carlotta :-

" The Indians . . . used to kneel as she passed : some have

said that animals and birds would come to her _ _

Carlotta is suddenly clapped into prison by the President's men. Hi sets out on a tremendous journey to find her affianced husband, Don Manuel, to come and save her and raise the land against the evil oppression of the insane Lopez. The rest of the book is the description of Hi's journey ; fatigues, perils and misfortunes all through. The men he

meets as he blunders through forests, marshes and mountain passes are, most of them, malevolent and brutal : they are worse than the vultures and pumas and man-eating fishes that surround him. The wickedness of man is only matched by the poison ivy that stings him and puffs him out until he is like a bladder, with eyes closed up, limbs enfeebled and head throbbing with pain. It would take long even to catalogue the soils and stones, the vegetables, insects, birds and brutes that rise up against him. All nature from lowest to highest pursues him with malice. And to help him on the way there is only his own absolute courage and devotion to Carlotta, a good word or a good deed once or twice, and a horse that spends itself to its last breath in his service.

He is caught and thrown into a gaol by Red soldiers, and the village in which he lies is set on fire. He rescues a drunken English scoundrel from the gaol and the fire :- " Wake up, man,' Hi said, ' we've got the door open ; we can got away.' The man sat up, pulled out a sheath.kuife, spat, and said : I'll cut your guts out ! ' . . . Hi had taken the man by the left arm, while ho kept the door open with his body. The man came unsteadily through the opening into the yard. 'There,' .he said, there.' Ho drew a deep breath, suddenly wheeled upon Hi, stabbed at him with his knife and screamed : ' And now I'll cut your guts out, like I said.' Hi had half expected something of the kind. By a twist of his body he shook himself clear, so that the door, at once swinging to, struck Henery Peach Kozia and made him miss his stab. ' Don't you think to dodge me like that when my blood's up,' Kazis said, you young swine. I'll cut you double for that. I'll cut you crossways, so's your own mother will deny you.' He began to laugh with a deep down, joyless chuckle, which made Hi's blood run cold."

But even that scene is outdone later, when Hi has intruded by mischance upon the secret explorations of another scoundrel, and is hunted relentlessly for a whole day through the bare scrub. To say nothing of the still, pale, wide-eyed; angry frice that he Siiddenly -sees` glaring .at him from the window of a deserted 'house or the night- terrors of the -- forest ; or the whirling, red-flecked pool in which he is e -night as he escapes from the wolfish Bright Tooth. • The journey is the whole story, really. The rest is cursorily, polished off in a few appendices. „.Carlotta has been shot almost as soon as Hi set out. Don Manuel is defeated for the -time be‘ing, but succeeds in beating Lopez in the end. Hi stays in Santa Barbara and finds scope or his engineering abilities. He- proves his belief that boats can be worked by machinery. The republic prospers. Everything goes sedately and well. The local poet writes% a great deal in praise of the new President and Carlotta and the main characters among the White leaders. So to an end.

But apart from Hi and his journey Mr. Masefield has again contrived to set in his story a few marvellously con- crete portraits of odd types. Best of all is Ezekiel Rust, an old poacher who had murdered a gamekeeper half by accident. Zekes talc of his " trouble " and his flight from England, and the mixture of cunning and silliness by which he tried to avoid detection, is written in masterly fashion. There never was a better book than this to keep the reader's blood stirring and his heart in his mouth ; and the lop- sidedness, the casualness of the plot, makes it only the better fun.