THE WHITE VOYAGE

Straight adventure , rather than the suspense of A Scent of White Poppies and the superior The Caves of Night, records the calamitous crossing from Ireland to Amsterdam of the Kreya- in the face of a spiritualist's warning of trouble to come , and the fact that two earlier boats bearing this name had gone down. Aboard her are a few passengers: Mary Cleary, presumably a widow with a small child, with whom the officer Mourtizen falls in love; a Polish circus family with a bear; Sheila and Henry Jones, running away from Jones' wife with some stolen money. A gale fulfills the prophecy but Captain Olsen, an inflexible man, is determined that the third Kreya will not sink. When the storm dies down, the ship is powerless and rudderless and drifts into Arctic waters to be locked by the ice there, and the passengers and crew make their attempt to reach land by foot. Jealousy, blackmail, and finally death combine with the natural elements to keep the crossing hazardous for all and incompleted by some....All the physical properties are here- of say Hammond Innes' adventure tales- and , while not of equal excellence- it still provides a king-sized story of danger and disaster.