of Pearls

Of Love, and a Dish of Pearls New Frisbie Romance

“ MARU”—a novel of the South Seas, by Robert Dean Frisbie . Pub

lished by Doubleday Doran, New York,

for $2.50.

Because of his puritan upbringing in the Californian foothills, Allen Susten ance had inhibitions that even the South Seas could not break down; not for some time, at any rate.

His Uncle Romany, a sinful old South Seas rover, who told tales of avaricious missionaries, and lust and murder and escaped convicts from Noumea, and soup tureens full of pearls hidden away on a secret island, was responsible for Allen seeking coral-island adventures on his own account.

He found Amaru island and fell in love with it; and in Wide-Awake village, on Amaru, he found Tina, the daughter of the Resident Agent, and fell in love with her. But he would not marry her— either legally, or South Seas fashion— until he found the soup tureen full of pearls.

On Amaru, too, he met Takataka, the poker-playing vicar, and Noah the King, and learned more about the pearls and the Reverend Christian who, a half cen tury before, had ruled the forgotten is land of Thanksgiving with a rod of iron, and who kept a secret penal island for recalcitrant pearl-divers and islanders.

He learned, also, of Princes Tenina, of Thanksgiving Island, who had given away the tureen of pearls in order to escape from Christian’s domination. “I’d rather be a feeder of pigs in Tahiti than Queen of Thanksgiving Island,” said Tenina.

Finally Allen and Tina, Abel the trader, the vicar and his fat wife and three

children, set out in the vicar’s cutter for Christian’s secret island, there to write the final chapter of Uncle Romany’s story.

IT is typical coral-island fare —pearldivers and buried treasure, man-eat ing sharks and fugitives from jus tice in stolen schooners. With love (and inhibitions) thrown in for good measure.

It is a departure from Frisbie’s usual trader’s stories of Puka Puka, but it is still Frisbie’s Polynesia—the traders, the village big-wigs, the love-making girls and the woman-chasing men (women chasing not being a derogatory term as it might in Anglo-America, but an honour able state).

Perhaps Frisbie fans will miss the per sonal touch of former autobiographical books, and bemoan the fact that there are no further adventures of the Cow boys, whom they met in “Island of Desire”; but, coming at this time the strictly non-serious romance of the South Seas should prove a valuable antidote to war-reaction nerves.—J.T.

The North African paper, “Dernieres Nouvelles d’Alger,” describes how the guitarists of the joint Tahitian-Cale donian Bataillon du Pacifique have con quered Paris with their songs of fishing, of sea life, and of love. The painter, Jean Gabriel Domerque. presented the musicians to many Parisian personalities, entertaining them in his luxurious flat.