When we first meet Jim Brady he's a poor, good-looking, brown-skinned outdoors boy with his head screwed on the right way, and with no apparent scruples about the weaker sex; the warrior's relaxation.

At 14 or 15 he's being initiated into the facts of life by the local nympho, at 17 he celebrates his first grown up dance by unselfconsciously attempting, to tumble the first nice, girl he's taken home.

He joins the Royal Australian Navy as a raw recruit. And, from the way he preens himself on the passenger ship taking him to Malta to join his first cruiser, the reader is left no doubt that he is going to be as successful in the deck cabin as in the gun turret.