Louis B. Lipchintz, closer to the end of a successful career in orthodonty than the beginning, was paddling away furiously against an overwhelmingly roaring ocean in his brave little raft.

The raft tilted and plunged, and rose high to the crest of every wave that it confronted. Louis B. Lipchintz was very surprised to be in the middle of all this crashing and gnashing of the sea, because the ticket he had purchased two weeks before said that he was heading for relaxing boat tour of the Solomon Islands.

He didn't know why he was in the middle of all this splashing and hissing and rowing with the fat arm of a deck chair, but he suspected that it had something to do with the deaths of his mother and wife two years earlier.