Told from the recollection of a 70-year-old physician, he stares at a \"calabash\" (I gather it\'s a halved gourd from his description, and hopefully not the same meaning as the \"calabash\" seafood restaurants which lined the main streets of Myrtle Beach, SC when we visited there 9 years ago).

The doc signed on in his younger days with a tramp steamer, the \"Molly Moran\", which when we caught up with his memories was docked in Port-au-prince, Haiti. The doctor (played by Mason Adams) became good friends with the steamer\'s captain Pete Johnson (played by Fred Gwynne, who like Adams does one of my favorite turns I\'ve heard from them on the CBS RMT). He meets Lily, a young Jamaican \"captain\'s woman\" who\'s engaged to be married to the skipper, and the first mate \"Beaucoup(sic? - pronounced \"Boo Coo\") a Haitian man who\'s got eyes for Lily.

While in Port-au-prince the cap\'n warns Beaucoup to stay away from Lily. When the first mate attempts to forcibly accost the woman, Captain Johnson makes his point to Beaucoup a bit more forcefully with a pair of brass knuckles. Beaucoup, in the meantime, has gone to his village to seek some \"assistance\"...he tells Lily that her man, with the help of a little Haitian voodoo (or \"voudoun\"?) is going to die soon...and the captain starts getting under the weather shortly thereafter... 