> 
> Probably a shell limit if you've set the hard limits.  For csh look at
> 'unlimit' and for Bourne look at 'ulimit'

Thanks - "unlimit openfiles" seems to have done the trick, bumping
from 64 to 994. 

(There was some anecdotal evidence that the position of -e on the
command line was the culprit, but I can't reproduce that now. :-)

chris