Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, veterans now of many battles, return in
this novel to the seas where they first sailed as shipmates. But Jack is
now a senior captain commanding a line-of-battle ships in the Royal
Navy's blockade of Toulon, and this is a longer, harder, colder war than
the dashing frigate action of his early days. A sudden turn of events
takes him and Stephen off on a hazardous mission to the Greek Islands,
where all his old skills of seasmanship and his proverbial luck when
fighting against odds come triumphantly into their own.