THREAD OF SCARLET
Ben Ames Williams '10; Houghton Mifflin Co.; Boston; 1939, p. 37/.
There are two matters about this Ben Ames Williams story that interest me greatly, and I am sure will interest all readers of the book. The first is the background of Nantucket, that island which has for me, somehow hovered off on the horizon of romance, from the days when I first read how Herman Melville's hero broke into poetry over Clam Chowder, to the day when I put in there in a boat which had been lost in a fog for three days. I had the sensation of the sea bottom in the Sound coming up to splash water on the ship, something that one feels nowhere else, I think, so different from the ocean where the rolls on the surge instead of striking against the ship carry it long on its crest. But the people who lived there, and those who live there now,—not much different I fancy from the islanders of 1812,—are very well described in this book, the only real interpretation I have ever found of these people in literature.
In the second place, Mr. Williams' hero, David Swain, moves straight into a psychological field. In short, he has been taken by a British captain and escapes from impressment, thereby classifying himself as a deserter from the British navy. But as the young man is highly imaginative,— something of the class of creative artist almost,—he suffers the torments of the damned every time a British ship heaves near the little unprotected island. Time and time again he goes through all the drama of being hanged from a yard arm, the "tight-collar" taunts of his enemy Jude recalling to him in all ghastly fashion the terrible details of his own execution. And yet the circumstances of War are such that David must run the risk again and again of falling into British hands. At the climax, when David is one of an American crew that fights off the boarding party of HMS Endymion, the double climax of the bitter fight and the emotional and physical combat within the young man, makes the scene very realistic and very powerful.
Without reservation, I can class this among Mr. Williams' best books. There was in the book only one disappointment for me and that was the defection of the lovely island girl Damaris. To be true, the more stolid Ruth did possess those qualities which make for a more desirable person, but there is something about Damaris that suggests the beauty of the sea, the odor of spices and perfumes from the east, the restlessness of dainty silken garments before a gentle breeze.
