Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, veterans now of many battles, return in this novel to the seas where they first sailed as shipmates. But a sudden turn of events takes them off on a hazardous mission to the Greek isles, where they are soon involved in fierce and thrilling action.

Captain Jack Aubrey accepts a commission to convey a British ambassador to the East Indies. The voyage takes him and his friend Stephen Maturin to the strange sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent, and through the spice islands where the French have a near-overwhelming local superiority.

Ashore without a command--and on half-pay to boot--Jack Aubrey's prayers are answered when Stephen Maturin shows up with a secret mission for him. The two men have been ordered to the Cape of Good Hope. There they hope to dislodge the French garrisons on the islands of Mauritius and La Reunion.

From the Dust Jacket: In Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir uses Jean-Paul Sartre's last ten years as a focus for understanding his entire life. Through her eyes, we see an intimate portrait of the man who was widely recognized as one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century-the foremost philosopher of existentialism, a Nobel Prize-winning playwright, and a central figure in almost every major philosophical, political, literary,...