I, Sam Rosen, have a tale to spin; and the reader is hereby warned: -- I have followed the fruits of the pen, I have devoured many stories dealing with the eruption of human passions, and in my travels I have heard things which stand one's moral tufts eternally on end. (Prelude)

Aboard our aging schooner, the Quean of Melbourne, we lazily inched out of a becalmed stretch in the Bismarck Sea, our yellow, weather-shredded sails hanging onto every pitiful breath in an exhausted sky; our one Diesel was minus the necessary fuel to drive us into a livelier clime.