"Wait a minute," I said. "This bhong tastes..." A heavy-headed sort of glee took hold of me. Everything seemed suddenly marvelous.

"Of course it tastes different. You're smoking fifty-fifty, marijuana and hashish. Here, let me have a puff."

A night that was two years long ensued. I woke up. We were at sea. Teenie was gone. I found, as I lay there, I was having trouble with dates. This was either July or September in either 1492 or 2186. The steward had the ports open and was blowing the place out.

"What's the date?" I said groggily.

"May first. 'Wake me early, mother dear, for I'm to be queen of the May,' as the song goes. If you opened a port before you went to sleep, you wouldn't keep breath­ing it all night, sir."

"Where are we going?" I said.

"Just where you ordered, sir," he said.

"Let's not get me into that again," I said. "Please tell me."

"Where the young lady's fiance wanted to go, sir– Marseilles. I must say, you are very indulgent of him. I personally consider the French a bunch of pigs."

"It seems rougher," I said, feeling the slight lift of the ship.

"It is rougher, sir. This upper part of the Med is always a (bleep)!"

I looked out the port. There seemed to be a rather heavy sea running. It made me feel queasy to look at it.

I got dressed and went on deck. I didn't want any breakfast. There was quite a wind.

Madison was crouched down in a deck chair under the protection of a ventilator. He looked up from an old book. "Hi, Smith. I really appreciate this chance."

"Of what?" I said gloomily.

He raised the book to show me the title. "The Count of Monte Cristo was a pretty wild kind of outlaw. I've often wondered if he was real or just the product of some master of our craft. One has to be able to separate truth from fiction."

"Since when did PR start doing that?" I said.

"It's a new idea I had," said Madison. "And we're going to get to the bottom of it."

I didn't want to get to the bottom of anything this morning. The stabilizers lagged a little bit and the ship had a definite pitch.

"In Marseilles harbor," said Madison, "there is a prison called the Chateau d'If. The Count of Monte Cristo was imprisoned there as a young sailor, according to this author, Alexandre Dumas. From thence he rose to a power amongst nations and was, in fact, an outlaw beyond compare. He is quite immortal. I want to see if there actually was a cell there with a tunnel like the one described. And it was terribly nice of you to send Teenie down to ask me. She certainly is a sweet, innocent child, isn't she?"

That did it. I went to the rail.

"Always face downwind," the sports director said, wiping me off. "You should have told the steward you felt queasy. Once you're really seasick, Dramamine doesn't do a (bleeped) bit of good. You get rid of it too fast. A few laps around the deck now and you'll feel fine."

It wasn't a very successful voyage to Marseilles. In the first place the French, while very glad to gouge any port dues they could, were unable to understand why we wanted to visit the Chateau d'If.

Through an interpreter, for none of us spoke French, the port director told us that if we weren't terrorists, he had no right to let people from the yacht wander around the town or harbor. There was a slim chance, though. If we could prove we were heroin smugglers, the port was wide open to us.

Madison was kicking the edge of a desk despondently. Teenie said we might as well go back aboard. She had some new pop records she'd got in Madrid and we could lie in bed and listen to them. That made me desperate. I beckoned the director into the next room. Through the interpreter I asked for a black fluorescent light. When I got it, I bared my chest and turned it on. They stared at the glowing letters, Rockecenter Family Spi.

The interpreter told them what it said.

Suddenly the port director was on his knees, kissing the cuffs of my pants. He was muttering and moaning.

"He says," said the interpreter, "you should have told him this at once. He had no idea you worked for the man who controls the world's illicit drug traffic. His slight against the Rockecenter name is unforgivable. He will now have to resign his post and end his days in disgrace."

The French are so emotional, so extreme!"No, no," I said, "it will be enough if you just let us come ashore and walk around and also visit the Chateau d'If."

The director began to weep with relief. He muttered something.

"He wants to assure you," said the interpreter, "that the illegal heroin traffic is maintained at its highest peak and hopes you won't report otherwise."

"I'll take his word for it," I said.

The port director got the interpretation and seized my hands, kissing them. He said something else, pleadingly.

The interpreter said, "He wants you to come to din­ner at his house this evening. He has a beautiful wife and daughter and insists you spend the night and sleep with them both."

I opened my mouth to protest and the interpreter quickly shook his head warningly. "Please don't refuse him. You will insult the French national honor. It would put him in a terrible position. He would have a nervous breakdown."

Wearily, I had to let Teenie and Madison visit the Chateau prison while I went to dinner.

All in all, Marseilles was a terrible experience. I left sharing wholeheartedly the opinions of my steward about the French.

The wife was fat and the daughter had a harelip.

Things like that tend to color your attitude.

We sailed the following morning. The sea was rough and I lay stricken in my bunk. The captain and the sports director came in.

"I am making a ship inspection," said Captain Bitts, "to make sure the French haven't stolen us blind." He gazed at my stricken face. "The Chief Steward tells me you went to the port director's home. Have you still got your wallet?"

Miserably, I fumbled under my pillow. I nodded, yes.

"Well, all right, then," he said. "We've only lost four fire hose nozzles. We were lucky." He was about to leave when he turned back, frowning. "You didn't drink any French wine, did you? They make it by squashing the grapes with bare feet and they often have athlete's foot. I wouldn't want the owner coming down with athlete's foot of the stomach."

"The port director served wine but I didn't drink any," I said.

"The port director!" he said, startled. "Jesus, you didn't sleep with his wife and daughter, did you?"

I nodded miserably.

"Well, (bleep) my eyes!" said Captain Bitts. "Sports, rush up to my cabin and get my medical kit. Steward, have you bathed him?"

The steward looked pretty agitated. The Chief Steward frowned at him. The two of them grabbed me out of bed, thrust me under a shower and began to get to work with antiseptic soap.

"Burn the sheets and the clothes he was wearing," ordered Bitts. "We can't risk an infested ship. Nothing will kill French lice but fire. They carry typhus."

The medical kit arrived. The captain got out syringes and needles that looked like they had been designed as bilge pumps. He filled them. They held me down. He shot me in the butt with three kinds of antibiotics and a heavy preventive dose of neoarsphenamine. It hurt!

As I was queasy, he finished up with a suppository of Dramamine. "If you're not up and around in a few minutes," he said, "I can give you an injection of Marezine for that motion sickness."

Another injection? "I'll be up right away!" I said.

Dressed in some new clothes, I wanly made my way to the breakfast salon. To my surprise, Teenie and Madi­son were at the table gobbling down omelets.

I pretended to eat so the waiter wouldn't tell the cap­tain I better have that injection. This (bleeped) crew knew everything that went on.