ANCHOR COMES BACK

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4220, 6 December 1939, Page 9

ANCHOR COMES BACK

HE “SWALLOWED THE ANCHOR.” BUT COULDN’T FORGET THE X SEA. Can a sailorman forget the sea? Humfrey Jordan’s sailonnen certainlyl don’t. His latest character is Bill Inch, who had been Senior Officer in one of the Ocean Transport’s vessels. He married a wealthy woman, and qt her urgent request he “swallowed the anchor,” became managing-director of the Thaung-lon Hardwoods Company in Burma, and settled down to a hard battle against powerful and unscrupulous competition. If it was through Ann that he left the sea, against his own wishes, it was due partly to her self-sacrifice that he was able to earn his way back to it triuinphantly. Bill Inch’s story, and those, of Sahdy Lindsay, his old marine engineer who went back with him, of John Dalesman, the expert forester, of clever managing Ann Inch and a score of others, is told in “Anchor Comes Back,” a new novel by Humfrey Jordan, just published. One of the delights in taking up a new novel by Humfrey Jordan is the certainty that wha,t he records will seem to Ibe completely authentic. That is a characteristic of too few of our modern novelists who write not from experience and observation, but from imagination that is often misleading and frequently very unconvincing. Humfrey Jordan writes about what he understands. He is an old Cambridge man he rowed against Oxford several years ago—was a lecturer in French at the University of Wales; but after the Great -War, through which he deserved distinction, he spent a considerable time in 'cargo vessels, and subsequently became associated wit’ the timber industry in Burma, where he spent some interesting and exciting years—valuable years, too, one imagines from the descriptions in “Anchor Comes Back.” This new, novel describes the disasters and the triumphs of a little timber company on the Thaung-lon Peninsula in Burma; and in every practical detail of his forest experience Mr Jordan carries the reader with him. It is a vivid and exciting narrative. One sees it all; takes part in it all; travels with Bill in his little launch when he brings to the settlement tile very official Watt-Richards, who was Conservator of Forests, and turns hint ever to Ann; one lives through the suspense of wondering whether the little company will get the lease that means success to it, or crash. And only one who has witnessed a fierce tropical thunderstorm will fully appreciate Mr Jordan’s description of the storm that swept down on Bill Inch as he was bringing hisi launch across the open sea, when the writhing, tormented clouds were split iby jagged lightning which raced across the sky closely pursued by deafening crashes of thunder, and rain that fell in a roaring deluge. It is the kind of storm that occurs at times in North Queensland. Readers will meet the cowardly arid unscrupulous Bazter, representative of a. London timber company, who had come to Thaung-lon with the object of securing the lease by “go-getting” tactics, and of forcing the company to sell for a song. They will be delighted to learn how the tactful and audacious Ann had him thrown out of the picture for a couple of days by innocently taking him amongst the nests of red ants. Baxter blundered as Ann felt he would; and at her sugestion he jumped into a muddy lake and had to be rescued. Before he was about again WattsRichards had signed the lease for the company; and he was far too much the official to do more than suspect that he had been cleverly and tactfully manoeuvred into place by Ann.

Then tame Sin-10, the small, wily, educated Burman, who had become a native agitator. Watts-'Richards, becoming all official, thought that he was directing operations against Sinlo and the strikers, 'but in his heart he knew that it was Bill who broke the strike, saved the lives of -he people in the white settlement, and finally helped Sin-lo to escape from the fury of the natives. Watts-Rich-ards was annoyed because he had failed to arrest Sin-10, but he was much too experienced to inquire into the reasons that prompted Bill to let him escape.

About this time the biggest timber concern in Burma had bought the assets of the little company. Financially the' deal was very satisfactory, but the new owners wanted neither Bill nor Sandy. There was no place in a highly efficient concern for seamen and marine engineers. Arrangements had hardly been settled when plague sweplt into the settlement in one of the Ocean Transport’s newest vessels.

It was brought to anchorage at the moment the captain died of sheer exhaustion. Bill promptly took Sandy, two native boys, and went aboard the plague-stricken ship to salvage it. Ann went to, but they did not know it at the time. Affter a perilous and nerve-wracking trip, during which Ann was nurse and cook, saving the lives of the over-worked men in the eight days’ journey. Bill landed the vessel at Rangoon.

That is how Bill came back to the anchor, getting the command of the Oriole trading between London and South Africa', with Sandy as his chief engineer.

The story has truth, variety, momentum, yet, somehow, the salvaging of the plague-stricken ship is just a little too coincidental and melodramatic. Something of the kind, however, had to happen to give Bill and Sandy the chance of earning their way back to the sea. Even Ann, too, realised the truth. As she watched those two mien salvaging that vessel, with the shadow of death over them all the time, she wondered at the mad stupidity that had taken two men from the seas.

They had loved the service; it was in their blood, a love not to be killed by desertion. She had been a fool to persuade, and Bill had been a fool to be persuaded. Sandy had been a fool to be tempted. They must go back again to the anchor. She too, had swallowed the anchor of her principles, andi she was glad. Apart from that touch of melodrama, “Anchor Comes Back” is a fine story, dramatic and gripping, with vivid pictures of men and women in all shades of character, courageous and confident, unscrupulous and go-getting, craven and boastful, but those of Bill Inch and Ann stand right out a|bove the others as flesh and blood characters. The book is flashed throughout with touches of psychological subtlety, descriptions of natural beauty, and there are some particularly good studies of the Burman natives and of implicit belief in ithe word of the honest white administrator.