_ "YESSIR. I WAS A LION-TAMER."]
* * * * *
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
MR. CONRAD'S new hero is an unnamed chief-mate who gets his first command
to a sailing vessel, also unnamed--queer and of course quite deliberate
instance of the author's reticent, allusive method which is so entirely
plausible. Her last captain, who had some mad savage hatred of ship and
crew, died aboard her and was buried in latitude 8 deg. 20'. The chief-mate,
who got the vessel back to port and remained under her new captain, is
convinced that the dead man haunts her vengefully; and one desperate
accident after another, racking a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost
persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8 deg. 20'--_The Shadow
Line_ (DENT)--is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less
interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious and
perfect artistry of this really great master of the ways of men and words.
Mr. CONRAD never made me believe that the new captain would go so near
sharing his mate's superstitious panic (which is perhaps because I know
little of sailor-men save what he has taught me); and in the incident, so
curiously and deliberately detailed, of his finding the quinine bottles
filled with a worthless substitute, and letting them "each in turn" slip to
ground, I had again the most unusual shock of being unable to accept the
credibility of his invention.
Pages:
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62