Engine-Room Nestor

THE HARBOURMASTER--William McFee --Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

"Think of the insight into the life of man we would get from an exact report of a morning's profane conversations in a shipyard at Cadiz when the Armada was fitting out! The trouble with a poet, and a novelist too, very often, is that he has never done the thing himself. He hate's work, and if by chance he has to work at the bench or in a mill, he becomes at once a wage slave and imagines all other workers have the same feeling towards work that he has." The words are Chief Engineer Spenlove's, narrator of The Harbourmaster, but the voice is Author McFee's. Few men have better right to such an opinion, for few men have so successfully combined two professions as William McFee.

The Harbourmaster is a ripe book; no young man could have written it. It is full of humor, tolerance and a kind of cool dogmatism that you may more than once find irritating in the course of its 439 leisurely pages. Narrator Spenlove-McFee tells his tortuous tale in his own way and cannot be hurried. While the passengers of S. S. Camotan, on a Caribbean pleasure-cruise, fretted at not being allowed to go ashore at Puerto Balboa because a revolution had just broken out there, Chief Engineer Spenlove entertained some of them with a tale. The day before. Puerto Balboa's harbormaster, Capt. Frank Fraley, had blown out his brains. That was the end of the story. Narrator Spenlove told his audience the beginning and middle.

Spenlove and Fraley had shipped together since they were young men; eventually Fraley became commander of the ship Spenlove engineered. Fraley, of the incoherent bulldog breed, needed a lot of help when it came to women. Fidus Achates Spenlove supplied it. But in spite of him, Fraley's long and serious affair with a Manhattan girl went up in smoke. Then the War took them to the Mediterranean. In Salonika Fraley acquired a pleasant French mistress, Theroigne, left her flat when he saw her younger sister Francine. Francine was beautiful but had an ungovernable temper; when Theroigne tried to get Fraley back Francine knifed her. Because his British susceptibilities were offended, Fraley would not marry Francine after that, but they lived together when he was ashore, many turbulent years. Francine wrecked Fraley's career; he lost his job and was glad to get the post of harbormaster at Puerto Balboa. Up to the very day Francine died of heart-failure they quarreled like hell-cat & bulldog, loved each other passionately. At the end Fraley sent for a priest to marry them, but it was too late. And with Francine gone, his world tumbling about his ears, Harbormaster Fraley shot himself the day before his old friend Spen-love's ship came in.

The Author. William McFee. son and grandson of a sea-captain, was born at sea on a three-masted square-rigger designed, built, owned and commanded by his father. During his 16 years in ships' engine-rooms McFee rose to be chief engineer, wrote nearly a dozen books. Retired from the sea in 1922 to be a full-time writer, he lives in Westport, Conn. Still English "to the core," he has been naturalized. He is big, has a sandy complexion, a dry wit. He does not believe that "an author is entitled to take precedence over architects and surgeons, over painters and bridge builders. He feels, in short, that Anatole France set the most perfect example for authors to follow as to deportment. A faintly ironical attitude and perfect good humor are indispensable. . . ." Other books: Casuals of the Sea, Aliens, Captain Macedoine's Daughter, Life of Sir Martin Frobisher, North of Suez.

The Harbourmaster is the January choice of the Literary Guild.

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