The uncharted land of dragons and other dreadful creatures, who ate the flesh of men, and of dark-skinned savages who also ate men’s flesh and wore their bones as decoration. Some questions for the author: Hal has no problem marrying a Muslim Balinese woman--indeed, he doesn't even seem to realize that she is not Christian.

Precious little,’ Hal admitted, and pointed out the tiny sails of the two pinnaces on the distant horizon.Wilbur Smith has done it again, a thrilling roller coaster of a novel, full of adventure and action, and packed with characters you will either love or loath as it journeys along the African coast in a time when the world was a different, simpler place. Plenty of buckles are swashed, it's true, and the hated Dutch East Indiamen are suitably hateful, but things were.

Or "They took comfort from each other, and drew on a mutual reserve of strength and determination" (p. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsover without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.Smith was born to a British family in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, in Central Africa, and attended Rhodes University in South Africa. The land of gold and ivory and slaves and other treasures, all waiting for a man bold enough to seek them out, and, perhaps, to perish in the endeavour. Henry Courtney, Sir Francis’s only son, accompanies him on this endeavor to the far sides of the earth. For that you have to be young and stupid,’ Ned Tyler growled, but shook his head fondly as he leaned against the whipstaff and stared up.

This is a seafaring quest around Africa; Sir Francis, the Captain, is captured and tortured by the Dutch. Smith opens this collection of adventures in exciting fashion, leaving nothing to chance as he entertains his readers. The booty gained is such an adventure is shared between officers, crews, and the issuing government. Within the waters of the northern continent, acts of piracy, rapine and murder – whose perpetrator previously would have been hunted down by the combined navies of Christian Europe and hanged from his own yard-arm – were condoned and even applauded when committed beyond the Line.The books I have read by him range from exciting action packed thrillers to occasionally cliche ridden stories of cringe worthy sex and violence. He ran out along it, balancing with the ease of an acrobat forty feet above the curling rush of the bow wave and the planks of the main deck. Although quite heavy handed (250 pages of torture, slavery, and escape plan), I did find this book unputdownable. With the south-east wind now astern she was transformed, lighter and more limber, even with sails reefed and with three feet of water in her bilges. Took me back to amy teenage years of reading when characters did not need to be fleshed out and adventures just keep happening on the seas.