Patrick O'Brian · 1980 · sea

The seventh novel opens in the glow of the Shannon's victory and ranges from Canada to the Baltic. Jack and Stephen sail home from Halifax through a gauntlet of American privateers, after which Jack is given the sloop Ariel for a secret mission to the Baltic: to detach a garrison of Catalan troops from French service at the fortress of Grimsholm. This route follows that mission and its disastrous homecoming, when the Ariel is wrecked on the French coast and the friends are carried prisoner to Paris, from which they must contrive yet another escape.

1. 1
   Halifax

   Fresh from the Shannon's triumph, Jack and Stephen reach Halifax in Nova Scotia to a hero's welcome, Diana Villiers with them and Stephen at last betrothed. But complications of money, marriage and a captured privateer entangle them before they can take ship for home across the dangerous Atlantic.

2. 2
   England

   The passage to England is a running fight against fast American privateers, the packet crowded with passengers and treasure. Safe home at last, Jack is handed not a court-martial but a fresh command, the brig-sloop Ariel, and a delicate task: to carry Stephen to the Baltic on the most secret of errands.

3. 3
   Grimsholm

   In the Baltic stands the fortress island of Grimsholm, held for the French by a regiment of Catalan soldiers whose commander is, by extraordinary chance, Stephen's own godfather. By patient negotiation rather than force, Stephen persuades the Catalans to change sides, and the near-impregnable fortress is won without a shot.

4. 4
   Brittany

   Homeward through the fogs and narrow channels of the Danish belts, the Ariel meets foul weather and worse luck, and is wrecked at last upon the rocks of the Brittany coast. Cast ashore in enemy country, Jack and Stephen are taken prisoner once again, this time on the soil of France itself.

5. 5
   Paris

   The captives are carried inland to Paris and held in the grim Temple prison, where Stephen, known to French intelligence, faces interrogation and worse. Only by their wits, and a bargain struck with a desperate French agent, do the friends contrive to break free and make their long way back to England.