The Sea-Hawk

Sir Oliver Tressilian is a Cornish gentleman and experienced seafarer whose reputation is destroyed when his jealous half-brother Lionel commits murder and allows suspicion to fall on him. Separated from Rosamund Godolphin and unable to prove his innocence, Oliver is abducted, sold into slavery and chained to an oar aboard a Spanish galley. His rescue by Barbary corsairs gives him freedom at the cost of the English identity and loyalties that have already failed him.

Years later, Oliver has converted to Islam and become Sakr-el-Bahr, one of the most feared captains serving the Basha of Algiers. He returns to England with the power to punish Lionel and compel Rosamund to hear his version of the past, but his private vengeance threatens the political order of Algiers and the allegiance of the men around him. The novel follows his struggle between the corsair identity built through captivity and survival, and the remaining attachments that make revenge less conclusive than he imagined.