Books: Conrad’s Trade

RIDE OUT THE STORM (470 pp.)—Roger Vercel—Putnam ($4).

Ever since Kon-Tiki, the publishing tide has run strongly seaward. And so, apparently, have readers’ tastes, with such books as The Came Mutiny, The Sea Around Us and The Cruel Sea, following each other as successive bestsellers. Yet few present-day writers seem interested in following the old Conrad tradition which dealt with the “glorious and obscure toil” of seamen. Of those who do, France’s Roger Vercel, author of Salvage, Troubled Waters and a 1938 Book-of-the-Month Club choice, Tides of Mont St.-Michel, is perhaps the best. In his latest novel. Ride Out the Storm, he again pits hard men against the pitiless sea and lets human nature take its willful course.

Ships to Race. The time is the turn of the century. The ships are three-and four-masted craft, fighting the. losing battle of sail against steam as they race with their cargoes of grain and nitrates out of Australia, Chile and San Francisco, round Cape Horn to their French home ports. From these ports come the homeless, hard-bitten men who man them—a surly lot, mostly shanghaied aboard by brothel-keepers to whom the poor fellows have lost every franc. As vicious as any man caught in this vicious cycle is Common Seaman Rolland, who is lugged aboard the good ship Galatéee, bloody-faced and fighting mad.

His shipmates find little to admire in Rolland; only the canny first mate senses the courage and leadership under the rebel’s mask. When an 18-year-old apprentice seaman is swept overboard in a heavy sea, it is Rolland who commands the dinghy that rescues the boy, though the waves turn Rolland’s crewmates grey-faced with fear.

A Wife to Gamble. Back in France, his first mate friend packs Rolland off to navigation school, and in a few years Rolland becomes first mate of the Antonine. Off New Caledonia, the Antonine is hit by a hurricane. The wind shreds her sails and splinters her masts; the sea roars across her decks and smashes at her hull. With the captain dying, it is Rolland who tongue-lashes the men and keeps the Antonine afloat; with the captain’s death, he gets his own captain’s commission.

Before Captain Rolland takes command of his ship, a grave-eyed girl named Genèvieve takes command of the captain. They marry and he takes her to sea with him. A few days out, Genvèieve gets seasick and stays seasick. Rolland, who is a different man at sea from what he is ashore, pooh-poohs her illness and sticks to the deck. Even when the first mate pleads with Rolland to land the sick woman, Rolland refuses. It takes him 20 days to round the Horn, and in that time he comes to know that he has gambled with his wife’s life and lost. Author Vercel leaves him, as Conrad liked to leave his heroes of the sea, a sadder but a wiser man.