The Bottle-Fillers. By Edward Noble. (William Heine- mann. Gs.)—The introductory
chapters to The Bottle-Fillers, where Denis O'Hagan, master of the steamship Sphinx,' loses his boat in a storm, and subsequently his certificate, are as fine as any in the book : both the biting, squalling peril at sea, and the warm, lazy, unpassionate atmosphere of the Court, are quite admirable bits of writing. Mr. Noble shares the strength and the imagination of Mr. Kipling, but he sees life from a different and more personal point of view: to Mr. Kipling it is the ship herself which must face the storm ; to Mr. Noble it is the men on time ship. The story which follows is an almost unrelieved tragedy—the story of how O'Hagan and his mate, Jimmy Barlow, fought in vain for bare existence for themselves, their wives and their children. Mr. Noble is very angry with the "black list," with the suspension from the merchant service of good men and true by judges who are ignorant of the sea, and with the practice of carrying deck-cargo; and he writes with the sharp fire of a would-be reformer. It is only now and then that he lets us see tlu•ough his guise as a preaches., to his profession as a novelist, in such little things as the sentimental and playful relationship of O'Hagan to his wife, which does not seem likely in people of such strong character, and in the unnecessarily dramatic ending to the book.
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