Girl Scouts Afloat

AFTER the exaggerated, somewhat pathological stories of travel that have been holding forth of late, the wholesome, credibly adventurous tone of this book is very refreshing. It is not entitled to very high praise, either for originality or skillful style, but the author, realizing her limitations, keeps from the danger of affected writing, and her work reflects sincerity and ability, if not literary brilliance.

The story concerns two American girls, who, with an eye for pioneering possibilities, discover the account of a barque that is to make its farewell voyage from Vancouver to the Fiji Islands. There are numerous difficulties of practicality and convention to be overcome, but the author and her friend are signed as midshipmaids, and depart, aboard a ship with a cannibal cook and a crew of old-time sailors. The journey takes about two months; the body of the book is made up of the ship's log, which was kept by Miss Cooper.

No mutinies trouble the ship on the seas; there are no primitive struggles of man and woman, man and elements, in the Jack London tradition. Of course there is a storm, but it is not the shipwrecking kind; and on shore, there is a native chief who falls in love with Miss Cooper, but he is practical rather than masterful, and when his proposition of a palm-studded island for her, and a pig for every man of the crew, is rejected, he is gentlemanly enough to withdraw. In fact, there is a generally twentieth-century atmosphere about the book that precludes the possibilities of stirring adventure. The reader acquires this contemporary angle, and asks no more from the pleasant story that it offers.