it an attempt to combine the objective and subjective methods of
treatment--to combine analysis of character and motive with arresting
episode. It is a difficult thing to do, as I have found. It was not
done on my part wholly by design, but rather by instinct, and I imagine
that this tendency has run through all my works. It represents the
elements of romanticism and of realism in one, and that kind of
representation has its dangers, to say nothing of its difficulties.
It sometimes alienates the reader, who by instinct and preference is a
realist, and it troubles the reader who wants to read for a story alone,
who cares for what a character does, and not for what a character is or
says, except in so far as it emphasises what it does. One has to work,
however, in one's own way, after one's own idiosyncrasies, and here is
the book that represents one of my own idiosyncrasies in its most
primitive form.



CONTENTS:

BOOK I

BELOW THE SUN LINE

I. THE GATES OF THE SEA

II. "MOTLEY IS YOUR ONLY WEAR"

III. A TALE OF NO MAN'S SEA

IV. THE TRAIL OF THE ISHMAELITE