2 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Will Havell hasn’t had the easiest of upbringings. He has the misfortune to be shipwrecked when young and was orphaned at the same time. He survived and made it back to England, where he was brought up by his grandparents, and that had its own trauma.

Before long, he was in the service of a Mr Huxtable, a man who wanted to head to sea to find his own son. Worryingly, though, Havell is starting to see a figure or face occasionally, and it is beginning to scare him.

Huxtable and Havell join Huxtable’s own ship and embark on a journey south, passing France and Spain. The voyage is most uneventful in the first weeks of the voyage. Havell gets to know the crew and the captain and settles into a daily routine.

The stop at a port for further provisions for the journey, and Havell has the chance to go ashore. They have to shelter in the port from the weather before they can disembark again to continue south.

It is on the second half of the journey to find Huxtable’s own son that it begins to feel really strange for Havell again. The presence that had haunted him back in England, he has started to see on the ship, and he is beginning to worry about what is going to happen on the ship…

I found this to be ok as a story, but didn’t think that it was that scary. That said, there were points where it definitely was a bit weird (fitting for the series that it is part of). Bearing in mind that it was published back in 1929, I found that the language took a bit of getting used to. Having read this, I wouldn’t necessarily rush to seek out any of his other works.

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