An Irish physician who has given up soldiering is arrested for dressing a rebel's wounds, sold as a slave in Barbados, and becomes the most dangerous captain in the Caribbean — chiefly because he keeps his word. Sabatini spoke five languages and chose English because, he said, all the best stories are told in it; this one gave Errol Flynn a career and the pirate novel its manners. Fifty-eight plates of harbours, wrecks and stormy coasts by painters including Salvator Rosa and Bonaventura Peeters the Younger give the sea story its weather.
