With rations running dangerously low, Captain Hornblower fears that the lure of the South Sea islands may entice the crew to mutiny. June 1808, somewhere west of Nicaragua. The Admiralty has ordered Captain Horatio Hornblower, now in command of the thirty-six gun HMS Lydia, to form an alliance against the Spanish colonial government with an insane Spanish landowner. He also is ordered to find a water route across the Central American isthmus, and...