The sailors and the families of Maturin and Aubrey get as far as the island of Saint Helena, where Napoleon is firmly exiled, and there the writing stops, with no hint of what might have happened in South Africa, had the squadron arrived there.
Hanson first spots Cape Pilar at the very opening of the Strait, and soon Surprise moors and conducts some trade with the inhospitable locals for meat and vegetables.
Having re-provisioned, she and Ringle sail northwards in fine weather until they enter the River Plate and moor close to the island functioning as the main administrative centre.
Wantage (a character killed and buried at sea in chapter six of the preceding book: Blue at the Mizzen) informs Maturin of a rumpus in the town: a fight between Protestant mariners from a Boston barque clash with the Catholic locals over the right of polygamy.
Further signs of local resentment emerge when a large scow dumps the town's filth next to the frigate and the Portuguese sailors shout abuse at the Surprises.
Aubrey explains that he does not own the Surprise, a private vessel once more, but ultimately pledges Maturin's consent in exchange for enough prime hands to man the shorthanded Suffolk, its crew having been reduced by disease.
While the ships remain docked in the town of Loando (modern-day Luanda, Angola) to refit after storm damage, the squadron's officers and families take up residence in a Portuguese military headquarters building.
See also Recurring characters in the Aubrey–Maturin series The book is the posthumous publication of an uncompleted typescript, published as a result of Patrick O'Brian's position as an accomplished author of historical sea fiction.
One wonders what a stylist as accomplished as the late Mr O'Brian would have made of the decision to publish such an unready fragment, but reading it sometimes feels like an act of intrusion.
McGrath remarks that "The Aubrey-Maturin novels are to a certain extent a ship-in-the-bottle enterprise: a miniature world, lovingly rendered and hermetically sealed in a dustproof vacuum.
"[5] Kirkus Reviews praises O'Brian's writing overall, one of the 20th century's finest prose stylists, and W W Norton's decision to publish the partial text as it stood when the author died.
Correctly deciding that it would be impossible if not sacrilegious to hire a writer to complete successfully a work no more than a quarter finished, thereby placing one of the 20th-century’s finest prose stylists among the ranks of the undead that populate the thriller and crime shelves in the bookstores, Norton has instead taken the high road and released this tantalizing beginning as O’Brian left it.
Days of superbly calm sailing take them to the Argentine republic where, thanks to murderous local political storms, their welcome is cool if not hostile, a situation eased splendidly by the arrival of the Papal Nuncio, a supremely charming African polyglot who is also Aubrey’s illegitimate son, the happy result of an ancient liaison.
To fix things, Stephen Maturin does some judicious buttering up and Aubrey reunites with Samuel Mputa, the region's Papal Nuncio and, incidentally, one of his "indiscretions" from his days as "a long-legged youth" serving on the South African station.
The typescript of the third chapter ends mid-sentence, but the handwritten manuscript continues on to include a duel between Maturin and a romantic rival, leaving readers begging for more.
Alas, this fragmentary but worthy addition to the series is truly the end of a literary era, leaving only readers' imaginations to fill in the rest of the story.
"[8] Listed at Fantastic Fiction[9] In the Afterword, Richard Snow noted that 5 million copies of the books in the series had been sold to date.