WORKING A PASSAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20768, 10 January 1931, Page 9 (Supplement)

WORKING A PASSAGE.

STORY OF A BET, Th« most, convinced opponent of gambling could hardly object, to such a wager as that which resulted in the publication of " Tinker, Tailor " " Greenhorn," as the writer calls himself, was idling about. London after the war, a victim of war weariness, the whisky habit and general nervous debility. A chance meeting in a London street led to a wager which sent him spinning round the world, hurled him into the lumber camps of America, flung him into the rigging of a Pacific windjammer, dropped him in Fiji, whisked him off to an Australian sheep-station, cannoned him into New Guinea and finally dropped him back in England, bruised, battered, breathless, but sound in wind and limb, iron-hard in muscle, forgetful of the meaning of the word " nerves " —a war-wreck re-made a man.

" A thousand pounds to a fiver that you're not game to work your passage round the world—take, say, five years to do it, working for your living as you go " —these were the actual words of the wager laid by old Jonathan Holders, a, white-bearded wealthy Londoner, who had provpd able to take the hard medicine he prescribed when in the days of the war he had " wangled " a job in a North Sea mine-sweeper, been torpedoed by a German submarine and floated for hours before being picked up by a British torpedo-boat. So " Greenhorn " accepted the wager, and not only won it but has managed to make a very readable tale out of his varied adventures on land and sea. The synopsis of these already given by no means exhausts the list tthich includes a spell in the North West Mounted Police and finishes with a job in the " piatehouse" of a second-class liner. incidentally, light is thrown upon at. least one item of the ship's expenses—which ultimately the passenger pays—the bill for "breakages.' ""\ou could find your way," so "Greenhorn" tells us, "from' Tilbury to Sydney on the bottom of the ocean by thp trail of crockery and cutlery hurled overboard by disgruntled stewards."

Those who prefer m their reading matter action to reflection will find in " Tinker. Tailor " just the right accompaniment for a holiday cruise. " Tinker, Tailor " by "Greenhorn" (The Bodley Head).