In 1905 his uncle, a shipmaster, offered him a berth in the engine room
of one of his steamers, bound for Trieste. He jumped at the chance.
Since then he has been at sea almost continuously, save for one year
(1912-13) when he settled down in Nutley, New Jersey, to write. The
reader of _Aliens_ will be pretty familiar with Nutley by the time he
reaches page 416. "Netley" is but a thin disguise. I suspect a certain
liveliness in the ozone of Nutley. Did not Frank Stockton write some of
his best tales there? Some day some literary meteorologist will explain
how these intellectual anticyclones originate in such places as Nutley
(N.J.), Galesburg (Ill.), Port Washington (N.Y.), and Bryn Mawr (Pa.)

The life of a merchantman engineer would not seem, to open a fair
prospect into literature. The work is gruelling and at the same time
monotonous. Constant change of scene and absence of home ties are (I
speak subject to correction) demoralizing; after the coveted chief's
certificate is won, ambition has little further to look forward to. A
small and stuffy cabin in the belly of the ship is not an inviting
study. The works of Miss Corelli and Messrs. Haig and Haig are the only
diversions of most of the profession. Art, literature, and politics do
not interest them. Picture postcards, waterside saloons, and the ladies
of the port are the glamour of his that they delight to honour.

I imagine that Mr. Carville's remarkable account (in _Aliens_) of his
induction into the profession of marine engineering has no faint colour
of reminiscence in Mr. McFee's mind. The filth, the intolerable
weariness, the instant necessity of the tasks, stagger the easygoing
suburban reader. And only the other day, speaking of his work on a
seaplane ship in the British Navy, Mr. McFee said some illuminating
things about the life of an engineer: