Captain Nathan Peake's adventures continue as he charts a perilous course into the dangerous waters of post-Revolutionary Paris. There, he encounters two of the most beautiful and scandalous courtesans in history and their playmate, laughingly dubbed Captain Cannon, who is about to win enduring fame as Napoleon Bonaparte. Back at the helm of the Unicorn, Peake joins Captain Horatio Nelson, another young glory-seeker, in a bid to wreck Bonaparte's plans for the invasion of Italy. Amidst the chaos of war, Peake has his own private agenda to find his lost love; but as the fighting spreads from the mountains to the sea, he discovers that glory comes at a higher price than he originally thought.