In this time when Her Majesty's ships plough the waves with steam instead of sails, the outspoken Lt. St. Vincent Halfhyde has been censured once already for challenging his superiors. But the Royal Navy needs fearless, danger-loving, and eminently capable men like Halfhyde, and so the lieutenant soon finds himself aboard the H.M.S. Aurora and headed for the West Coast of Africa where a Russian flotilla threatens Her Majesty's interests. Halfhyde's mission is to discover what the Czarists are up to before the situation sparks a war. Posing with a teenage midshipman as an officer escorting a deserter on the dreaded Slave Coast, Halfhyde now has only his wits and his wiles to protect him from his old enemy, the Russian Prince Gorsinski--while the Queen herself awaits Halfhyde's success.