I look tensely real people at a peak moment crisis. • David Bell, Master and Captain of the annibal, is one of Gann's most mem-able characters, an embittered idealist ho is staking all that remains of his treer on the success of this voyage. apt. Bell loves the ways of sail and all the once sleek old barquentine is still eautiful to him. The paying passengers e another thing ... Harry Hutton and Ethel Peacock hate le ship, yet they are has-beens, too. The Reverend Butterfield, chasing pri-ite devils, and Oliver Wiggins, with a evy of South Sea maidens to regret, are stlessly aware of slow progress. Mr. and Mrs: Morris, fleeing the past, je buoyantly hopeful that the Cannibal ill deposit them in a shining new world. But the final passenger has no interest the ship at all. She is Charlotte King, woman of quiet beauty with a disturb-gly unquiet past. The story of Charlotte ing is a novel in itself-an engrossing orld of its own within the framework f this book. Gann introduces these people with im-eccable artistry, and the voyage of the annibal becomes an intensely moving ory of heroism and disaster, with a cli-lax that is in every way inevitable and ight. It is Gann's finest novel-a tremendous reading experience. From 1956