TWILIGHT FOR THE GODS

The sea and a ship, rather than the sky and a plane, frames a successful story of another precarious crossing; if the scaffolding is familiar, there is again an assortment of people aboard, and critical circumstances combine to deflect their destinies. The Cannibal is a 56 year old three-masted Barquentine, and she is making the crossing from the South Pacific to Mexico with a cargo of copra, and a few passengers: Harry Hutton, an ""expert in failure"" and a crude fifty who nurtures the illusion of success in Ethel Peacock who follows him faithfully; the missionary, Butterfield, who must save himself first; Mr. and Mrs. Morris, elderly Russian Jews; Charlotte King, a planter's widow, whose self-containment is also a concealment of her past; and David Bell, the captain, a lonely man, dedicated to his ship and the bitter memory of another ship which had gone. The Connibal heads into heavy weather, and her crew- with the help of the first mate- is sullen; the pump breaks down, and freakish seas almost sink her- until she reaches port in Honolulu where all of these people- not too much to start with- will have salvaged a certain moral courage from the physical ordeal.... Perhaps not as glamorized or pressurized for that wide popular public as The High and The Mighty, but an assured audience will find it readable and rentable.