Once again, I am blogging before I have started the second volume. I am more used to Michael Scott's style now - its heaviness doesn't 'crush' me as much! In fact, so far, I am enjoying The Cruise of the Midge more than I did Tom Cringle's Log. I found the first volume more gripping than the second(and the whole of Tom Cringle). Half the book is set on the West African coast, known as the White Man's Grave - Scott's book reinforces this image. The 'Midge' is aptly renamed the 'Mosquito' when bought by Spaniards later on in the West Indies. Africans had lived with mosquitoes spreading Malaria for generations and many had built up a resistance to the foe; this was not the case with Europeans, who died in great numbers of the sickness. Through his protagonist, Benjamin Brail, the author describes the horrors of both the slave traders and the tropical environment in which they operated. His detailed description of the horrific river brought to mind aspects of Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness about the early chapters.
Perhaps the most powerful and heart rending chapters (VIII and IX:) are entitled Cape Missionaries and Foundering of the Hermes, and describe in great detail the effects of a violent Atlantic storm and the subsequent foundering of a ship of missionaries; all bar one small child (and his pet lamb who is lashed to him) are drowned. This little lad is nicknamed Dicky Phantom, after the pet monkey who had just been swept away from Benjamin Brail's felucca. Another poignantly described tragedy: as his little black gibbering face, with the eyes starting from his head, and his mouth open and grinning, while he coughed and spluttered out the sea water, looked its last at us from the curling ridge of a wave... I have always disliked, been afraid of, the Sea and Michael Scott's graphic descriptions simply rammed home this fear.
Benjamin Brail is a more sympathetic character, to my mind, than Tom Cringle and by the end of the first volume, I had identified more with the other characters - they were believable and functioned as quite separate individuals, much more so than the Cringle cast. The second volume, however, was more of a struggle. Although there are several episodes with well-judged humour, too often it felt rather forced. The brute Adderfang, the unbalanced Lennox, the hearty Mr Hudson, the attractive de Walden, the lady-love of Braill, Helen Hudson, are all characters in their own right, but I found the Irishman, Listado, - with his flaunting gingham coat and potato face - tiresome and over-the-top. More importantly, I felt that the second volume appeared to be an action-replay of the Cringle book. Yet another description of journeys into a West Indian island's interior can become boring. Incidents in the 'Midge' have counterparts in 'Cringle'. There is a little more of a plot in the former - the Lennox-Adderfang rivalry, the mystery of de Walden's antecedents - which showed Scott was trying to write something more than a travelogue.
I can't say I found the two novels 'easy' to read, but they were worth persevering with. Michael Scott's own experience in the West Indies and his consorting with many real-life persons who were transferred into his fiction, give a reality, a verisimilitude, to his tales.
No comments:
Post a Comment