The Hundred Days

For Jack Aubrey, Napoleon’s Hundred Days was an eleventh-hour rescue of a lifetime’s service in the Royal Navy that, for all its brilliance and excitement, seemed to be ending in inconspicuous respectability.

When Napoleon escapes from Elba, Aubrey is already half-way across the Atlantic to try his fortunes with the young Chilean republic. He is appointed to operate within and without the Mediterranean on several difficult and dangerous missions, supported as always by the subtle intelligence of his old friend Stephen Maturin.

Conspiracy in the Adriatic, in the Berber and Arab lands, night actions, fierce pursuits, the natural wonders of a still uncolonised North Africa all exert their pull on Aubrey and Maturin.