Her love for Captain Jack so strong, Suki Brown, spending her time between Bath and London, has searched for her one-time lover - and father of her child - for nearly a year. During this time, Jack, as slave master on the Bonny Beaufoy, has voyaged to the Gambia and Antigua in search of human cargo. But when he adopts a young blue-eyed child, who is devoted to him, Jack starts to realise that his slaves, like him, are nothing more than gentle human beings. Unconventional in his thoughts about slaving, he finds himself at loggerheads with the captain and one day, full of rage, Jack threatens to shoot him. Spring comes and the Bonny Beaufoy returns to England and Suki Brown, still loyal to the elusive Captain Jack, waits for her love on the quayside. Too late, though, for Jack's contretemps with his superiors has resulted in him being taken from the ship in chains. Now dispatched to Bedlam on the grounds that his revolutionary ideas make him a lunatic, Suki will have track her former lover down once again...