On a map of the North you may be able to find an island named after one _Margaret_. It should lie, though I have sought it in vain, just about where the florid details of the Norwegian coast-line run up to those blank spaces that are dotted over, it would seem, only by the occasional footprints of polar bears. Anyhow it was so christened by two bold mariners who lived in the _Spacious Days_ (MURRAY) of QUEEN ELIZABETH. That they both loved the lady (ELIZABETH, of course, too--but I mean _Margaret_) may be assumed; but that they should eventually, with one accord, desire to resign their claims upon her affection must be read to be understood. I for one did not quarrel with them on this score. For had not their mistress in the meantime found companionship more suitable than theirs? Besides, if even the author is so little courteous to his heroine as to invite her to appear only in two chapters between the third and the twenty-seventh, why should two rough sea-dogs--or you and I--be more attentive? And indeed it is a correct picture of his period that Mr. RALPH DURAND is concerned to present rather than a love story. In the writing of the love scenes considered necessary to the mechanism of the plot he seems very little at his ease; and so marked at times is his discomfort that I must confess to having felt some irritation when my willingness to be convinced was not met halfway. In the handling of his sheets and oars I like the author better, though even here I miss what might have brought me into a companionship with his people as close as I could wish on a most adventurous journey of nearly four hundred pages. But perhaps that is my fault; and, at the least, here is a straightforward sea story--as honest as the sea and as clean. * * *