Books: Billiards on the High Seas

THE CAPTAIN LEAVES HIS SHIP (313 pp.) —Jan Cwiklinski, as told to Hawthorne Daniel—Doubleday ($4).

History can sneak up on a man when his back is turned. Captain Cwiklinski, master of the Polish passenger liner Batory, was not looking one May day in Manhattan six years ago, when a baldish little man with glasses came aboard on a 25¢ visitor's ticket and sailed as a stowaway. Unlike most stowaways, he soon dug first-class passage money from his pocket. He also owned up to the name of Gerhart Eisler. For unwittingly aiding in the escape...

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