British naval officer Jack Aubrey and surgeon Stephen Maturin, with his
great love, Diana Villiers, speed home to England with news of their
latest victory over the Americans. But Maturin is a marked man for the
havoc he has wrought in the French intelligence network in the New
World, and the trio run into trouble when they attract the menacing
attention of two American privateers. The chase that follows through the
fogs and shallows of the Grand Banks--and the highs and lows of the love
affair between Maturin and Villiers--is as tense, stirring, and
unexpected in its culmination as anything Patrick O'Brian has written in
his epic series.