HALFHYDE'S ISLAND by McCutchan, Philip

St. Martin's, New York, 1975. first US edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 5 1/2 x 8, FINE/FINE CONDITION, 184 pages. # 2 in the Halfhyde series.................................. A report is received at the British Admiralty that a geological freak, the result of natural forces operating at the bed of the ocean deeps, has produced an island in the Pacific, south of Japan's Parece Vela Island. The reports indicate a sizeable island that could prove suitable for use as an extended naval base: and the old heavy cruiser Viceroy is despatched with Lieutenant St. Vincent Halfhyde as second-in-command under Captain Henry Bassinghorn, to conduct a full survey and plant the British Flag......................................................... Upon arrival at Hong Kong, Halfhyde is informed by the Commodore that his old adversary, Admiral Prince Gorsinski, commanding a squadron of modern cruisers, has sailed from Vladivostock with the likely intention of taking the island in the name of the Czar of All The Russias ; from then on speed is of the essence. After a desperate, typhoon-racked chase northwards from the island, possessed in the meantime by Gorsinski, the task of Halfhyde and his Captain is further complicated by the arrival on the scene of a battle squadron of the Imperial Japanese Navy. . ....................................... This book, second in the series of Philip McCutchan's novels of Queen Victoria's Navy in the i 89os, is as exciting and action-filled as his first.