THE BLACK TANKER

This is good adventure, with a current interest note, in a story of a boy who skipped on an oil tanker bound, he thought, for China, only to find that it carried oil to a Japanese island, and that over it hung the cloud of fear and distrust Most of the crew was new. A few were suspects. And this lad, a landlubber who had to learn everything, was used by the captain as a watcher in order to try to locate the source of disturbance. A murder, strange accidents -- not all of them thoroughly explained -- keeps the interest alert. Eventually, as a solution with which virtually none of the officers or crew can quarrel, the Chinese agent aboard succeeds in destroying the cargo and the ship, though the men get off to safety. The denouement is not wholly convincing, but the story is a good one.