THE ALTAR STAIRS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2861, 13 January 1909, Page 72

THE ALTAR STAIRS.

By G. B. Lancaster.

London : Messrs Hodder and Stoughton. Dunedin : Messrs R. J. Stark and Co. (Colonial Library.) That G. B. Lancaster is a lady, and a New Zealander at that, is what may be termed an open secret. Mot unnaturally this will increase the interest in a novel which has been favourably received in the Old Country. "The Altar Stairs"' is a really powerful novel. The scene is paitly laid in Noumea, with its French civilisation and its convicts, and an island in the Pacific, where the struggle between the trader and the missionary is iought out. Rod Maclean, the hero, is introduced when at his lowest —one of the derelicts of the Pacific. He is asked to do a big thing—" a man's work," calling for hands not too clean, and almost at the same time becomes inspired by the first honest love of a lifetime. The resulting struggle, with its unusual setting, is told in vigorous language. The hero's portrait is given what may be called a series of verbal snapshots from different points of view. John Strickland, the young missionary and Rod's opponent, yet his best friend, remarks : "He has been a good man once, and I believe he'll be a good man again. But there is hell fire in between for him, and he's putting his hands to it now." The Scotch engineer of the j blackbirding steamer which Rod comj niands says of him : "If that lad was ! carin' the scrape o' the de'il's fingernail i what men cud do unto him, they'd some 'o' them do it." The French commandant ' said of him : " He will fight all men and make love with all women." Rod's own- ' motto is that " It's only the careful man that gets hurt." The hero, it will thus be seen, might well be one of Ouida's, and it would appear from the writings of female writers that they are rather partial to men with a slice of blackguardism in them—men with a past. The struggle between Rod and his associates and John Strickland, the missionary, whom they j seek to drive out of the islnnd because ! he is a serious check on their nefarious I doings, and the manner in which they ' recruit labour for the trading station and plantation is graphically told. At length Rod, unwillingly at firVt, does much to counteract the evil he has wrought, and the readc-r is able to realise the true \ meaning of the seemingly inappropiiate title, ' The Altar Stairs,'"' and why the author quotes Tennyson's lines — I falter where I firmly trod, And, failing with my weight of caies Upon the great world's altar stairs That slope through dai-kness up to Gcd, I stretch lame hands of faith G. B. Lancaster lias taken Kipling as her model, and in this novel out-Kiplings Kipling to gain virility. Some of his phrases are bodily adopted, such, for instance, as " the hurry of an off-shore wind " and " the unknown legion."' One of the characters is thus described : — " He was trader clean through, and the sea's own mark was set on him. He had the muscle of a bullock and the wisdom that may come to a man in 50 years' beat on the great Pacific track, where the I lines of all nations cross. Also he was ! part Portuguese, and this ga\e him more j cunning than should decently be expected of any man." To those who delight in reading a novel full of virility and rather strange episodes the novel will highly rej commend itself.