In the tradition of C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey, comes the second book in the diaries of Daniel Wren. Wren learns that his fresh promotion to midshipman is both a blessing and a bane, giving him his first taste of authority and the grating pressures that accompany it. The Phoenix has been dispatched to Surat, presidency of the British East India Company. Its mission: to sail into the Narmada River deep into the exotic, black heart of India to discover the fate of a Company factory there with whom all contact has been lost. On the way they must engage a small but deadly fleet of Malabar pirates who prey on the towns and villages along the river, led by the bold and brilliant commander Kunjali. In the course of this quest, Wren comes to confront a dark, unexpected fate of his own.