Little God Ben

Ben, a diminutive stoker with a perpetually grimy face and an uncanny gift, knows trouble is brewing. It isn’t the heaving grey sea or the angry wind lashing the Pacific liner that warns him—it’s his knuckles. Whenever they itch with a particular hitch, something dreadful follows: a barrel of beer, an assassination, a corpse in an empty house. Now, aboard a cruise ship where passengers waltz in boiled shirts and pretty girls in blue frocks smile at the engine-room crew, the itch is worse than ever.

Convinced the ship is doomed, Ben tries to sound the alarm. His fellow stokers dismiss him as morbid, the Second Engineer scoffs at his superstition, and the Chief Engineer floors him with a single blow. Yet Ben cannot shake the weight of responsibility. If he could not stop the kittens or the assassination, perhaps he can stop this. Driven by a stubborn sense of duty and a fleeting memory of a kind smile, he resolves to take his warning straight to the Captain. But on a vessel where a little man is kicked about like a football, being right may prove more dangerous than being ignored.