Kydd and fellow novice sailor Nicholas Renzi leave the lumbering Duke William for the sleek frigate Artemis and promptly find themselves in cutthroat battle again, overmatched against the French frigate Citoyenne. The face-off ends in hand-to-hand combat and a hard-won victory for the men of the Artemis, but an act of desertion threatens both the valued friendship of Renzi and Kydd and their futures with the Artemis.

"Follow Louella Parsons, a profesional, world-class sailor, as she competes - and faces near disaster - in Le Gran Venee, Earth's premier race around the world. Surviving that, she finds herself testing her sailing prowess deep in Jupiter's atmosphere. The wine-red seas of Jupiter make the brutal conditions she faced in the Southern Ocean seem trivial. Louella and her partner then face a new challenge --to sail across the frigid plains in the thin-to-nonexistent...

November 1807. Captain Sir Thomas Kydd must sail to Lisbon to aid the Portuguese Royal Family's evacuation in the face of Napoleon's ruthless advance through Iberia. In the chaos of the threatened city an old passion is reawakened when he meets Persephone Lockwood, a beautiful and determined admiral's daughter from his past. But the Royal Family's destination is Brazil, Perspehone's England, and it seems Kydd's chance has gone again. Only later he...

Herman Melville's first book, partly based on his actual experiences as a captive on Nuku Hiva (which Melville spelled as Nukuheva) in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands.