BOOK OF THE WEEK

Taranaki Daily News, 18 January 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

BOOK OF THE WEEK

PIRATES AND SLAVERY

(Ry

C.E.)

"The Happy Parrot,” bv Robert W. Ohambers; Cassell and Company, Ltd., London and Melbourne. Mr. Robert W. Chambers is a novelist who has had a very considerable measure of success in recent years. He has written some admirable stories of adventure, for the most part going to the past for his themes, and he has a happy knack of giving his stories an air of historical authority. Moreover, Mr. Chambers is not making- a practice of turning out books as if they were ma-chine-made. “The Happy Parrot" is the .seventh mentioned in his publishers’ list, and unless my recollection is at fault it is at least five or six years since I saw the first of them. The result‘is that the novelist has plenty of time to gather his materials and polish his work, and he is able to produce a well finished article. The immediate predecessor of “The Happy Parrot” was ‘‘The Sun-Hawk,’’ a fine story of pioneer life and Indian warfare on the Canadian border. That it was any better than “The Rogue’s Moon,” previously regarded by general consent as Mr. Chambers’ best work, I would not like to say, but it interested me particularly because it demonstrated the writer’s keen sensibility and thorough understanding of the period whose history he had , studied. One does not go to the historical or semi-historical novel to read history. This kind of book bases its appeal on the success of its effort to recreate the- atmosphere of the past and to people it with real human beings. Mr. Chambers, actually gives us less history in “The. Happy Parrot” than he did in “The Sun-Hawk.” The sea is his theme —the sea off the American coast of Florida and Carolina and the African Gold Coast at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when slavery had just been abolished and piracy flourished. The Americans were chafing under English domination, and seafaring folk especially were very sore. British ships were patrolling the outer waters of New York and American ships were rotting at the wharves. England and France were at war, and an embargo had been placed on American trade, President Jefferson and “a cowardly Congress” having forbidden their country’s ships to stir outside their own ports “lest the English or French seize them and drive us into war.”

Among those affected by the embargo is Erie Stake, a fine sailor of 28 years. The China trade having come to an end, Strake has lost his first mate's position and is idle and almost starving when he makes the acquaintance of Cintra Quinn, a beautiful Irish-French girl, who lives with her uncle, Captain Quinn, in New York. Cintra takes him home to dinner and supper, and they are singing a song when Captain Quinn arrives. At once enraged by the presence of a strange man, Quinn attacks the guest like a veritable Camera. A terrific battle results in Strake knocking out the aggressor and becoming a hero in Quinn’s eyes. Nothing will do but that he must enter Quinn’s employ as captain of the Happy Parrot, for the firm of Quinn and Maltby has a fleet of ships. Quinn and Maltby, it turns out, are in the slave trade, but Stake is penniless and disgusted with his country’s embargo. He signs on and thus is introduced to a brief career of the highest adventure. The excitement and dangers of the first voyage arc greatly intensified by the presence of Cintra, who has dressed as a man and shipped as cook at the last moment. Quinn is so angry with her that he offers Strake 50,000 dollars to marry her, and the bargain is made and the" marriage performed, though husband and wife remain almost strangers. Strake now has a wife as well as a ship in his care, and he soon finds his hands full. Not only is he menaced by ships of war and revenue vessels but even worse are the pirates who hang about to rob the slavers. The worst of these is Buke Gooly, a loathsome creature, though Strake’s own associates are little better.

Gooly finally surprises Quinn and murders him, and then Strake finds that his own mates are treacherously seeking his destruction. The pace of his schooner, his heavy armament and his own shrewdness arc sorely tried on a number of occasions before he gives up the slave trade, much to his wife’s relief, and decides to live a more peacable life.

The fights at sea, the struggles ashore when the illegal cargoes of slaves are being disposed of, the manoeuvres of Strake’s secret enemies, the kidnapping of his wife—the story abounds with the most thrilling incidents, all of them most skilfully portrayed. Mr. Chambers has a fine narrative style. He is never prolix, but describes each incident in rapid-fire language, so that the story is full of vigour and never loses its snap. His use of rather quaint language befits the period, and he is always plain and straightforward. He is not the sort of person wHio calls a spade an agricultural implement and is not a bit afraid of allowing good red blood to flow. There is strength in every line of his tale, and it is all the better for that. For those who like to look beneath the surface ‘’The Happy Parrot” makes an attractive study of a phase of colonisation, It is interesting to speculate as to the historical origin of such characters as Strake and Cintra and the various bad buccaneers, and the hero and heroine also attract one as cleverly conceived characters. The unfolding of the nature of each demonstrates many very natural contradictions, which strengthen their appeal to the reader. Their strangely begun romance often looks like coming to grief, but it works out very nicely and one lays down the book an admirer of both. Cintra’,s waywardness has only added to Her charm, and Strake has turned out a real hero. ‘‘The-Happy Parrot” is a first-class talc of full-blooded adventure.