From the Forecastle to the Cabin. By Captain S. Samuels.
(Sampson Low and Co.)—Not one of the books of adventure with which our table is flooded at Christmas can surpass this true story of Captain Samuels. We speak of it as tree because, though no one can vouch for it, yet there is testimony, quite as effective in its way, to the writer's character. One of the adventures might have been taken bodily out of a romance. At Constantinople a woman shows herself unveiled at a window, and throws a note to some sailors. She is a Christian, and begs them to help her to escape. One of the party, a Swedish captain, falls wildly in love with her at first sight. She is like a little playmate of his youth. The sailors theist her to escape —we have not space to tell the tale, but it is all en regle—and lo ! she is the very girl from whom the Swede had been parted years before. An adventure of another kind is that of the mutiny which broke oat on his ship, the ' Dreadnought,' and which the captain quelled by the help of some of his passengers. This, too, is admirable in its way, not the least no on account of the good feeling and wisdom which the writer shows in his suggestions as to the treatment of the most hardened ruffians. A strange and adventurous life Captain Samuels's has been. One does not know whether rather to marvel at the toughness of the stuff of which he is made (a cat is nothing to him), or to admire his honesty, courage, and kindness.
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