The year is 1667. Sir Francis Courteney and his son Hal are on patrol in their fighting caravel off the Agulhas Cape of Southern Africa. They are lying in wait for one of the treasure-laden galleons of the Dutch East India Company returning from the Orient. So begins a quest for adventure and the spoils of war that sweeps them from the settlement of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa to the Great Horn of Ethiopia far to the north--at a time when international maritime law permitted acts of piracy, rape, and murder otherwise punishable by death. Martin's Press.