With the Napoleonic wars looking all but over, Jack Aubrey was already on his way across the Atlantic to try his fortunes under the flag of the young Chilean republic when Napoleon escaped from Elaba. Hurriedly appointed to command a squadron flying the broad pennant of a Commodore, Jack was made flag officer in all but name, to operate within and without the Mediterranean on a number of difficult and dangerous missions in an atmosphere of confused political allegiances and with whatever ships could be scraped together at a moment's notice.

Conspiracy in the Adriatic, in the Berber and Arab lands of the southern shore of the Mediterranean, night actions, fierce pursuits and the natural wonders of a still uncolonised North Africa all exert their pull on Jack, now ageing – wheezing indeed as he hauls himself aloft – and his old friend the intelligence agent Stephen Maturin in this the nineteenth novel in a series that has, like the service it depicts, carried all before it.

Reviews

“Read with his customary salty zest by Robert Hardy”
Guardian 12/12/98

“Robert Hardy is just right as the narrator of this well-abridged audio book.”
Home and Country January 1999