DANGER MY ALLY

A life-story of adventure in the believe or not department comes to us from an Englishman whose disregard of respectability may have distressed his father but need not distress us. A born adventurer, Mike Hedges asserted his propensity for independence and freedom the day he threw an inkwell at a schoolmaster who intended to give him a public whipping. Escaping routine learning via extracurricular books, he was geared for his first trip at sixteen, one which led to Finland, Norway, and disaster as three men fell under the blows of the unexpected Arctic winter. In 1900, the author hit New York via Canada and whiled away five years gambling on the stock market and playing pet to bunch of millionaire card and market players, meeting J. P. Morgan and Duveen in passage. With a most respectable twenty thousand dollars he returned to England and settled, even marrying, but this state of affairs couldn't last. Making stay-at-home arrangements for his wife, he was off to Central America by way of New York. Falling right into the arms of the notorious Pancho Villa, he was compelled to fight the Americans Villa hated, but when war between Germany and England was declared he appealed as an English patriot that Villa let him go. Later adventures go on to Central America, to the islands off Honduras, to the uncovering of the lost city of Lubaantun, fishing at Jamaica, hobnobbing with the primitive Chucunaque, feared neighbors of the San Blas inhabitants, to encounters with iguanas and crocodiles and much more. A flamboyant tapestry of unusual design, woven with anecdotes and odd facts, this has a rough and heady appeal.