Legacy Reprint Series

The supposed writer, a consumptive baronet, describes a voyage undertaken to lengthen his days, but ending in virtual suicide, commited to allow a friend to marry the girl whom he loves, although she has a fancy for the hero. This friend vibrates between the peerage and the commonalty in an extraordinary fashion, sometimes being Lord John and Lord Esterbrook on the same page, and certain Cuban filibusters who adorn the tale are rather less real than wax figures. — American Ecclesiastical Review, Third Series--Vol. II.--(XXII).--April, 1900.--No. 4., page 447.

Stories of the sea by a man who has followed it as a business. These are imaginary tales of the whale, the shark, the penguin, the albatross, and others. Mr. Hains is the author of "The Wind-jammers." — The Bookman, Volume XVIII, page 441. In "The Strife of the Sea" (Baker & Taylor Co.) Mr. T. Jenkins Hains undertakes to do for the denizens of the sea and its shores what Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton has done for land animals and their human hunters and companions. He does it in practically the same manner, also, and seems to find it easy to assign a fairly human psychology to pelicans, penguins, and albatrosses on one side, and to rorquals, loggerhead turtles, sharks, albicore, and the giant rays or devilfish on the other. Most of the stories deal with mankind as well, but the essential thing is the sea bird, cetacean, or huge fish which he has described. As the inhabitants of the waters and their shores are predatory in the extreme, there is slaughter and to spare throughout the book, though lives are saved almost as often as they are lost. The book is striking, and in subject matter—though not in treatment—is sufficiently original. — The Dial, Volume XXXVI, page 24.

The scene of Captain Hains's new sea story is laid in the region of the Florida Keys. His hero, the giant mate of the wrecking sloop, Sea-Horse, while not one to stir the emotions of gentle feminine readers, will arouse interest and admiration in men who appreciate bravery and daring. His adventures while plying his desperate trade are full of the danger that holds one at a sharp tension, and the reader forgets to be on the side of law and order in his eagerness to see the "wrecker" safely through his exciting escapades. Captain Hains's descriptions of life at sea are vivid, absorbingly frank and remarkably true. "Bahama Bill" ranks high as a stirring, realistic, unsoftened and undiluted tale of the sea, chock full of engrossing interest. "As for Bahama Bill, the reader will like him whether he will or no; he dominates the book, unscrupulous though he may be. Nevertheless there is not a mean streak in him. We shall be tempted to read 'Bahama Bill' several times." — Springfield Union. "Mr. Hains has done much to amuse and entertain those who like rollicking tales of the deep." — Boston Transcript.

The popular doubt of the day is chiefly born of popular assaults on Christianity. The great bulk of the prevailing skepticism is unscientific. Dashing, audacious attacks on minor details of the Christian system have caught the ear of the public; and the very elaborateness of the defense has so magnified these details, as to lift them to undeserved conspicuity. Christianity can afford to take the aggressive, to compel a hearing, to challenge popular doubt to look some of Christianity's more important phases honestly in the face. Here are its "Book" and its "Christ." Here are its definite doctrines, and its views of man, matching marvelously the facts. Here are its successes, challenging, in anything like the same conditions, an approach to comparison. These things, and things like them, are to the last degree evidential. Their exhibition is their demonstration. They are Christianity's setting, enivronment, substance, achievement. They are the ever increasing marvels and the ever brightening glories of the gospel. - Preface.

The book might have just come into port, so redolent is it of the sea. It describes the wooing of one William Gore, formerly captain of the Southern Cross, then mate of the Conemaugh. On board this vessel, as passengers, are a trim young lady and her mother. When the good ship is taken by pirates, Gore wills to remain and run the risk of identification with the black flag, rather than desert the woman he loves. He has the reward he deserves. The book is written in a clean-cut, crisp style, and is a thoroughly good "book of a day." — Library of the World's Best Literature, Volume XLIV, page 281. Captain Gore tells why he shipped as mate of the Yankee clipper Conemaugh; of an encounter with an English convict ship, The Countess of Warwick, whose desperate crew overpowered their captain, and after burning their vessel boarded the Conemaugh, compelling the service of Gore, who gives in detail the thrilling adventures of himself and the second mate, not omitting the romantic part played by Miss Waters. — The Annual American Catalogue 1896, page 82. Another of Captain Hains's inimitable sea stories, in which piracy, storm, and shipwreck are cleverly intermingled with love and romance, and vivid and picturesque descriptions of life at sea. Mr. Hains's new story describes the capture on the high seas of an American vessel by a gang of convicts, who have seized and burned the English ship on which they were being transported, and their final recapture by a British man-of-war. "A capital story, full of sensation and excitement, and a rollicking sea story of the good old-fashioned sort. The reader who begins this exciting voyage will sail on at the rate of twelve miles an hour until it is finished." — Boston Transcript. "Bold in plot and told with spirit. Mr. Hains knows the sea and keeps its salt smell on every page." — Philadelphia Enquirer. "An all action sea tale of the first rank by a master of his craft." — New York World.

THE WHITE GHOST OF DISASTER (The Chief Mate's Yarn.) A sea story by CAPT. MAYN CLEW GARNETT. A story of an ocean liner, which betrays a marvellous similarity to the disaster that befell the ill-fated TITANIC. Thirteen short stories whose initial one, the story of the title, parallels in many points the Titanic catastrophe. The "white ghost" is a monster iceberg against which an ocean liner is driven with such force that her bows are jammed a hundred feet into seemingly impregnable ice. The other tales are: The light ahead; The wreck of the "Rathbone"; The after bulkhead; Captain Junard; In the wake of the engine; In the hull of the 'Heraldine'; A two-stranded yarn (2 pts.); At the end of the drag-rope; Pirates twain; The judgment of men; and On going to sea. — The Book Review Digest: Eighth Annual Cumulation, page 190. "All of Capt. Garnett's stories deal with exciting happenings at sea and most of them with shipwrecks. They show more sea knowledge than literary craft." — N. Y. Times.