[6] A newspaper advertisement promoted the series by stating: "The author has a knack of taking his readers into the various parts of the world and giving them not only the adventures that can be found there, but also a local color which proves to be instructive and entertaining.

[15] Years before the first book took place the two black men were found in a canoe, tied up and nearly dead, and they were brought aboard Uncle Naboth's ship and treated with two patent medicines, Nux Vomica and Bryonia.

[16] Joe Herring is a little younger than Sam, and though fortune hunting has made him rich, he chooses to be the ship's cabin boy.

Archie Ackley is the same age as Sam, comes from a wealthy family, but is "a reckless, adventurous sort of chap", and often sails on the Seagull as a passenger.

Hugh Fitzgerald) In 1897 16-year-old Sam Steele, whose mother died when he was young, is told by sailor Ned Britton that his sea-captain father was killed in a shipwreck.

The stolen property is found where the housekeeper hid it, and Mrs. Ranck is told she won't be arrested if she gives back the house and leaves town.

Captain Steele, Sam and Uncle Naboth are on their new ship, Seagull, preparing to sail for Egypt with U.S. factory-made "Oriental" rugs and fake antiques that will be sold to tourists.

At night, Sam sees a leaking boat being rowed to the Seagull, carrying orphaned Joe Herring, a cabin-boy who had run away from a cruel captain who beat him.

The prince tells Sam he believes his servant, Mai Lo, plans to steal the treasure buried in the royal family's tombs, known as the Ancestral Halls.

After the prince's death, the three youths, along with South Sea Islanders Nux and Bryonia, begin their journey to the treasure, with Mai Lo as an escort.

But if the boy fortune hunters enter the Ancestral Halls it could mean their death, and it is not until Mai Lo is vanquished that they are able to leave with what Prince Lum Pu had wanted them to have.

Lieutenant Allerton of the U.S. Navy obtains a 3-month leave and he, along with a Mayan named Chaka, ask Captain Steele for passage on the Seagull to Yucatán.

Allerton's mother and sisters are about to lose their mortgaged home, and Chaka knows of a hidden city where people from the lost continent of Atlantis live.

It is a perilous adventure, and the boy fortune hunters and their companions are nearly sacrificed to the god of the sun, but they escape with treasure, and Lieutenant Alberton saves the family home.

While in Australia, Señor de Jiminez wants to buy the Seagull and use it to transport arms and ammunition to start a revolution in Columbia.