A story of friendship, a friendship that stands the strain of desertion, of betrayal, of awareness of littleness-and even at the close, when murder has been done, something survives. A story too of two youths against the times-the scene is Stonington, Connecticut, during the embargo and the War of 1812, of adventure sought in secret piloting of ships running the blockade, of the temptation to seek wider horizons pitted against affection and loyalty for the man who had held them as sons, though they were his bondsmen. Then there is Deliverance, brought up as their sister-suddenly finding herself beloved of one, betrayed by the other. Impressment-the slave trade-life on a British man of war-glimpses of the Indies-many facets in the seaboard life of the young nation, while older nations warred, here is good regional material with faster pace in action than characterized his last novel, Panama Passage -Kirkus