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THE CRUISE OF THE Breadwinner (112 pp.)--AY. E. Bates--Little, Brown ($ 1.50).

A violent, muffled rattle split the still morning air over the English Channel. "That ain't no gun-testing," said Skipper Gregson, gripping the wheel of the tiny patrol boat and staring into the sky. Seaman Snowy, 16, whose eyes and ears were sharp, stood at the rail, cried suddenly: "There's a plane out there! Two planes." "Go on!" mocked Jimmy, engineer and third man of the Breadwinner's crew. "I can hear [a Messerschmitt]," Snowy shouted. "What was the other [plane]?" Gregson asked. "They both gone now," said the boy sadly. But, half an hour later Snowy, Jimmy and Gregson had found and hauled aboard the two exhausted pilots--an Englishman and a German.

So begins this new novel by Britain's H. E. Bates, who served with the R.A.F. in World War II, has written scores of short stories and several other novels (Spella Ho, Fair Stood the Wind for France). His latest is short and exciting enough to be read between supper and bedtime; its nonstop narrative includes the low-level gunning of the Breadwinner by an enemy plane, the damaged ship's run home under sail through a rising storm, the deaths of the rescued pilots. Along with all this, Author Bates raises the moral question that was common in the years following World War I: What friendship does a man owe to his injured, mortal enemy?--a question that is answered with more humaneness by the R.A.F. pilot (who at least respects a fellow flyer, whatever his country's regime) than by the men of the Breadwinner.

But what Author Bates has to say on this age-old theme is neither novel nor especially interesting. Apart from its dramatic narrative, the book's impressive qualities are those of Bates's best short stories--a fine perceptiveness in matters of wind, weather and atmosphere, displayed in clean-cut, economical prose.

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