Devon, England 1805. James Morgan, a 10 year old orphan runs away from a brutal life slaving on a farm. After narrowly escaping the hangman's rope from an incident in a coastal town, he stows away in an American cargo ship heading for Charleston South Carolina. He is soon found but is treated well by the elderly captain who becomes his guardian when he retires from the sea after they disembark. They live for seven years near the Mississippi river where James completes his education and develops a precocious gift of using the English language. When he reaches seventeen years of age, his guardian dies and he moves down river to New Orleans and finds work in a gambling saloon. He meets Harry Parfitt, the disowned son of a millionaire father at the moment he is facing death after having been accused of cheating. Using his skill with words, James persuades the other card players to put away their daggers. From that day, Parfitt refers to James as 'Gentle' Morgan. They have several adventures in the dangerous Swamp area of New Orleans before war breaks out with Great Britain and they have many more when they go to sea to fight the enemy. They are eventually captured and taken to Dartmoor, a notorious prison in England. An American prisoner already there is a massively built black slave called Richard Crafus who has been bribed by the prison governor to report anyone planning to riot or escape, for which the penalty is death. Parfitt and James suffer considerable hardship but make friends with a French prisoner from the Napoleonic wars in Europe and develop an extraordinary plan to break out that relies on taking Crafus with them. Although the escape is successful and they become friends with the huge man who helped them capture a ship, more trouble awaits when they return to America and Crafus is convicted as a runaway slave and arrested to return to the plantation .