Amyas spends time in the Caribbean coasts of Venezuela seeking gold, and in the process finds his true love, the beautiful Indian maiden Ayacanora.

During the return journey to England, he discovers that Rose and his brother Frank have been burnt at the stake by the Spanish Inquisition.

When he is permanently blinded by a freak bolt of lightning at sea, he accepts this as God's judgement and finds peace in forgiveness.

Or The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, Rendered into Modern English by Charles Kingsley.

Kingsley dedicated the novel to Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, and Bishop George Selwyn, whom he saw as modern representatives of the heroic values of the privateers who were active during the Elizabethan era.

[4] The novel's virulent anti-Catholicism, as well as its racially insensitive depictions of the South Americans, has made the novel less appealing to a modern audience, although it is still regarded by some as Kingsley's "liveliest, and most interesting novel.

[10] J. G. Ballard, in an interview with Vanora Bennett, claimed that being forced to copy lines from the novel as a punishment at the age of eight or nine was the moment he realised he would become a writer.