AustLit

Abstract taken from 'Some New Novels' (The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954) 9 Jan 1915: 8. Web. 9 Jul 2014 (http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article15544987).

Mr. Ambrose Pratt has struck while the iron is hot. Since war broke out there have been more sensational doings in the South Seas than any described by R. L. Stevenson or Louis Becke, and in "War in the Pacific" Mr. Pratt has turned these to good account. The story opens in Upolu, not long before it ceased to be a German possession. A handful of Britons seize time by the forelock and endeavour to escape. Among thom Is one Harrington, an ex-surgeon of the navy, who is responsible for the story of their various vicissitudes. Before they get far on their journey they are overtaken by a German tramp which has been converted into an auxiliary cruiser. They are treated with the utmost brutality, though Harrington's professional knowledge secures him better entertainment than his friends receive. They are taken to a secret naval base somewhere in the Carolines, where they are condemned to work on the plantations. Meanwhile Harrington still continues his enforced pilgrimage until the Brandenburg is blown up by a mine. He alone escapes, passes himself off as a German-American who has volunteered for service in the cause of the Fatherland; has a glimpse of the capture of Herbertshohe, and, finally returning to "X-Motu," as a sort of scullion on a German collier, repays with interest all that he and his companions have suffered. Incidentally he avenges the wrongs done to his wife, a beautiful half-caste from the islands. Six months ago we should have said that the story was wildly improbable, but since then so many "Impossible" things have happened that one hesltates to apply the adjective to anything. Harrington's adventures hold the reader from beginning to end, and he himself Is drawn with an attention to characterisation which does not usually fall to the lot of a hero of a novel of incident. (Crltchley Parker.)