In any event, almost no one escaped the effects of the faulty life jacket; so it was—after they deflated—with a good deal of annoyance that they came back to the cabins, quite ready to hear Captain Klaus’ explanation of what had gone amiss.
Unfortunately though, the foghorn, which had been put to practice during the drill, was now evidently jammed. At any rate, it continued steadily during the Captain’s after-drill talk and completely shut out his voice, so that it was like looking at someone talk behind several layers of glass. The Captain himself didn’t seem to realize that he wasn’t coming through, and he went on talking for quite a while, punctuating his remarks with various little facial gestures to indicate a whole gamut of fairly intense feelings about whatever it was he was saying.
The business with the foghorn was more serious than at first imagined; it continued, blasting without let-up, for the rest of the voyage.
Quite incidental to what was happening during the drill, fifty crew members took advantage of the occasion to go around to the cabins, lounges, and dining rooms, and to substitute a thin length of balsa wood for one leg of every chair, table, and dresser on ship.
When the Captain finished his lengthy and voiceless discourse, he smiled, gave an easy salute and left the bridge house. It was about this time that all the furniture began to collapse—in half an hour’s time there wasn’t one standing stick of it aboard the Christian.
Strange and unnatural persons began to appear—in the drawing rooms, salons, at the pool. During the afternoon tea dance, a gigantic bearded-woman, stark naked, rushed wildly about over the floor, interfering with the couples, and had to be forcibly removed by ship’s doctor.
The plumbing went bad, too; and finally one of the Christian’s big stacks toppled—in such a way as to give directly on to ship’s dining room, sending oily smoke billowing through. And, in fact, from about this point on, the voyage was a veritable nightmare.
Large curious posters were to be seen in various parts of the ship:
SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH
LET’S KEEP THE CLAP OUT
OF CHAPPAQUIDDICK
as well as rude slogans, vaguely political, scrawled in huge misshapen letters across walls and decks alike: