This sixth installment in C. S. Forester"s eleven-volume chronicle of Horatio Hornblower places the captain in the gravest danger yet. The time is May, 1810, deep into the Napoleonic Wars. Hornblower, newly in command of his first ship of the line is on his way to Spain with a ragtag, brutish crew. All their seamanship and all of Hornblower"s ingenuity are demanded when the "Sutherland" takes on four French men-of-war.