Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Epistles From Deep Seas: Being Another Kettle of Sea-Pie
IN sea-pie it fell unexpectedly to my lot to Write a book that caused critics and correspondents to ask for more. This volume is my thankful answer to them. But the larger part of the book was first written twenty-five years ago, and Shivers's three narratives were taken down two years or so before then. The real kindness of those readers lies in the fact that they have determined me to rummage out, from half - forgotten literary efforts and from the ever closing, ever-opening chambers of memory, these necessary ingredients for another Pie. And here again I owe thanks to those generous readers for in sending me to a sort of muniment chest (really an old trunk and a much-dilapidated French valise that bore me rough and varied company from port to port the world about), they have reawakened many an old and pleasing sensation, have made me live again the healthy if rude and often brutal life under the Red Ensign. More, the search has brought back to recollection and examination a bundle of letters from steam tramps, Which are now intended to follow this volume.
It must not be thought, however, that the succeed ing pages were penned originally as they are pre sented here. Naturally, they were not - not all of them. In what was written on the high seas there were many forced breaks, sometimes of days - many a sudden leaving-ofi at the cry of Lee fore-brace Watch, there oh or the clang of the imperative bell that called to duty, many an abruptly-curtailed note, continuation of an idea, incident or piece of description, that was being made surreptitiously in the fo'c's'le during a watch on deck. Gales and fights made other interruptions. But, for the sake of continuity and appearance and out of respect for the reader's interest, most of those gaps are passed unheeded. Again, years of writing must perforce lead to a process of trimming and adding, to that which the critic calls selection. Thus it is that these epistles have been edited, more, perhaps, than was the case with My Vagabondage and Sea Pie, nearly all of which had been ofiered times out of mind to editors of magazines, etc., and not a twentieth of the whole accepted.
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