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from madness to dysentery. Bom bard believed that the danger in drinking sea water, in the past, lay in the fact that castaways had con sumed it only after several days of thirst when the process of de hydration of their bodies was far advanced. He believed that the in take of salt-water should begin af; once, and that anything up to a pint-and-a-half a day was permiss ible up to a limit of five days be fore the danger of nephritis became acute. In those five days, sufficient fish should have been caught to pro duce adequate fresh water for the body’s requirements.

All these things he could prove in the laboratory to his own satis faction and that of other scientists.

But it was another thing to over come the prejudices of tough sea men. The doctor decided that there was only one way to do it: by vari ous means he procured an inflat able rubber dinghy, about 15 feet long and six wide, with just suf ficient space inside the floats to lie down, and set out alone across the Atlantic. With him he carried fresh water and food in sealed containers, as emergency rations. They were still sealed when he reached his destination at Barbados.

When Bombard leaves the laboratory and takes to the sea, he leaves also the realms of deduc tion and science and his story be comes one of thrilling adventure— a human story of a man who de liberately pitted himself against the relentlessness of a mighty ocean and on which survival was not merely a problem of finding suf ficient to eat and drink—but a psychological matter of consider able magnitude. Why, Bombard had wondered, did one hear of men be coming crazed a few days after be ing cast away from foundering ships? After the 65 lonely days and nights it took him to sail from the Canary Islands to the West Indies he had an adequate answer.

As a navigator, Bombard was a good physician. It took him twice as long for the crossing as an ticipated, and at one point he was 600 miles out of his reckoning. As part of the castaway’s equipment, the doctor had Harold Gatty’s Raft Book, a notable compiliation pub lished during the war to aid cast away seamen and airmen. Let us say frankly that Dr. Bombard does not see eye-to-eye with Mr. Gatty on the matter of signs and portents' of approaching land —and par ticularly does he disagree in the matter of frigate birds which are supposed to indicate that land is not more than 100 miles distant.

After he had discovered his dis astrous navigational error, Bom bard had this to say: I had now made up my mind on the value to be attached to the books written for

the benefit of castaways, with all their hints on navigation, signs that land is near and all the evidence of floating timber, butterflies, gos samer threads and flies and birds.

Do not take it too hard, dear author of the “Raft Book”; whether the frigate bird can spend a night at sea or not I do not know, but it is certainly to be found 1,500 miles from land. It is also incorrect to say that it does not catch its own fish, as I have seen them swoop on the flying-fish chased out of the sea by the dolphins. (See article on frigate birds on page 69 of this issue).

It would be interesting to hear a debate between Mr. Gatty (who now lives in Suva) and Dr. Bombard on the whole question of being cast away at sea. And this is not an impossibility, either: It has been suggested that the doctor join the magnetic survey in the Pacific which is shortly to begin with the blessing of the British Admiralty (see Smallships News, December

Pim).

In the meantime, The Bombard Story will provide you with an in teresting theory and its thrilling solution. (Published by Andre Deutsch, London.

Our copy from Collins, of Sydney: Aus tralian price, 15/6.)

Murder in the Mallee

IF you are a connoisseur of Who dunnits, you have permission to add Arthur Upfield to your reading list. He has a respectable list of thrillers to his credit —but his newest, Murder Must Wait, is the first to come this way. Read in the line of duty, Mr. Upfield may now step up beside the ladies—the Misses and Mesdames Marsh, Christie, Wentworth, Heyer, Rhinehart, etc. (Women, generally, write better mysteries than men).

Upfield writes against an Aus tralian background, but his books are published by Heinemann, of London, and are top-standard if the latest is any criterion.

Chief character is Detective- Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (“all my friends call me Bony”) who has sapphire-blue eyes, dresses like something out of the Tailor and Cutter, speaks as pedantically as a University professor should (and does not,) is part-Aborigine and never forgets a foot-print. Ridicul ous? No more so than Christie’s Hercule Poirot and his moustaches and little grey cells; or Wentworth’s aged spinster who, when she is not slaying crooks, is knitting intermin able singlets for her niece Ethel’s offspring.

Scene of Murder Must Wait is the country town of Mitford, in one of the irrigated stretches of the Murray River Valley. Five boy babies have been abducted and a murder committed when Bony is called into the case. In his turn, he enlists the aid of Policewoman McGorr, who learnt her crime from the ground up: her father having

been a famous safe-breaker in his time. She also knows a lot about babies.

Bony, with the help of Police woman McGorr, inevitably and satisfactorily solves the mystery that has baffled all the other CIB experts. But apart from its merit as a straight Whodunnit, consider able amusement can be derived from Upfield’s portrayal of the typical small Australian town where the creme-de-la-creme of society is formed by the local bank managers and the doctors and where the high light of social intercourse is the sherry party—or as Policewoman McGorr (who has no delusions of grandeur) puts it, a plonk party.

Upfield. no publicist for Aus tralian sherry (which he describes as having a similar digestive re action to the oil in sardine cans), has his characters eat half-a-pound of butter a-piece as a fortification when called upon, in the line of duty, to indulge in one of these social binges. But his scenes and his people have the ring of truth.

If you happen to know the Murray Valley, where its towns and villages are veritable oases of irrigated vines and citrus in a desert of mallee scrub, you will have no difficulty in recognising Mitford. And, apart from Chief Inspector Bonaparte, who is supposed to be eccentric, any how, the characters act like Aus tralians. The idiom of some of them is, therefore, likely to be incom prehensible to overseas readers but to an Australian it sounds authentic.

Even our Number I pin-up Who dunnit writer, Ngaio Marsh, who hails from just across the Tasman, falls down in this department when she attempts to write Australianese.

Two things in this world should be left strictly to Australians. One is wearing a Digger hat; the other is all attempts to transcribe their language. When outsiders attempt either the result is unadulterated caricature. (Published by William Heinemann, Ltd.; Australian retail price, 10/6.)

A Little Nonsense Now

and Then

TALL tales are not everybody’s meat, but if you are in the mood. Dal Stivens’ Gambling Ghost and Other Stories can be re commended for a little incidental reading. . Now making a living from writ ing in London, Stivens arrived there from Australia via Sydney Consoli dated Press, the Army Education Service, the Department of Infor mation and Australia House. He is a contributor to many leading UK newspapers and magazines and his stories have been broadcast over the BBC. This is Stivens’ first ex cursion into fantasy of this sort, but if you are in need of a half-hour of entertainment you can learn all about the shooting capabilities of Cabbage-Tree-Ned, the race-horse that could understand English,

Ironbark Bill, and the wonderfully intelligent sheep-dog which be longed to a drover whose sheep grew multi-coloured fleeces which ended in a piece of Campbell of Breadal bane tartan four miles wide and seven miles long.

These nonsense tales will give you some laughs; you will find, as well, beneath the robust wit, some very pointed satire. (Published in Sydney by Angus and Robertson. Australian price, 13/6.)

In the Beginning—Through

Aborinine Eyes

OVER 50 years ago, Mrs. K.

Langloh Parker, who had grown up and always lived amongst the Australian aborigines on station properties in the New South Wales outback, collected and had pub lished in London, five volumes of aboriginal legends.

These volumes have now been put of print for two generations but recently, H. Drake-Brockman, who is a well-known writer in her own right, has selected the best of them which have now been published by Angus and Robertson under the title Australian Legendary Tales.

The result is a fine production, ad mirably illustrated with draw ings by Elizabeth Durack, who is justly famous for this type of work.

By and large, the legends of native people are incredibly boring to the general reader. These aboriginal stories are, however, away above average: they make more sense than the usual fantasy that passes for native legend. There are probably two reasons for this—one, in the way they have been written by Mrs. Parker and presented by Mrs. Drake-Brockman; and two, in the fact that although the Aus tralian aborigines were poorest in , environment and material culture, , amongst the natives of the Pacific : area their spiritual life is acknow ledged to be far superior.

Apart from the usual as-it-was in-the-beginning angle to these ; tales, the stories reflect the attitude ■ of the aborigines to their life and i circumstances and environment. , For this reason some of them can j be classed, on our standards, as ; cruel or brutal and perhaps there- ■ fore, the Legends are best read to < youngsters, rather than read by i them—particularly if you have the 6 kind of offspring who can be moved i to tears by the tribulations of the ‘ heroines of the Brothers Grimm.

Apart from its interest to students e of native lore, it is an admirable ‘ presentation volume for some special I child who already has been taught d appreciation of good books. In this e field it lately has been a favourite $ with Christmas-gift seekers. (Our copy from Angus and Robertson. , Sydney. Australian price, 25/-.) The second day of a diet isn’t too c hard —because by that time you’re s off it. —Mrs. Earl Wilson.