Summary
Obadiah Wolf, barnacled patriarch of a lineage scarred by salt and legend, inks his own cartography across the parchment of his weather-beaten torso: a cryptic archipelago of ink that doubles as deed, birthright, and curse. When Ellory Glendenning—a silk-collared predator who treats maritime law like wet tissue—demands the final coin for the schooner Laughing Lass, the transaction feels less like commerce than ritualized extortion. Yet before the mooring lines are even coiled, Bad-Eye—a cyclops with a soul to match—catches wind of the dermal map and abducts the old mariner, shackling him to a compass that points toward ancestral gold. While this abduction unfolds, Ellory and his foppish heir Harold hijack the Lass, conscripting Rory O’Malley, a young helmsman whose heart beats in sync with Patricia Wolf’s every breath, to spirit Harold beyond the reach of conscription. A typhoon of Shakespearean caprice churns the Pacific into a cauldron; Rory and Patricia mutiny, wresting the wheel and beaching the schooner on the very atoll where grandpaternal ink meets buried bullion. Amid fronds whispering secrets older than iron, they exhale chests of Spanish doubloons, rescue Obadiah from Bad-Eye’s cutlass, and maroon the buccaneer to the gulls. On homeward tide they sail, treasure in hold, Ellory forced to sign the Lass back to its rightful captain while Harold is delivered, gift-wrapped in khaki, to Uncle Sam.
Synopsis
Planning on sailing his schooner, the Laughing Lass, to his ancestors' treasure island in the South Seas, veteran seaman Obadiah Wolf makes his last payment on the vessel to Ellory Glendenning, a crook who hopes to cheat the old man out of the boat and then sell it to the government at an outrageous price. Learning that Obadiah has a treasure map tattooed on his chest, a pirate called "Bad-Eye" forces the old buccaneer to accompany him to the island. Meanwhile, Ellory and his son Harold seize the Laughing Lass, ordering Rory O'Malley, who is loved by Obadiah's granddaughter Patricia, to sail it to the South Seas so that Harold may evade the draft. During a storm, Rory and Patricia take control of the schooner, and soon they too land on the island. Rory and Patricia unearth the treasure and then rescue Obadiah from "Bad-Eye," whom they leave on the island. Upon the party's return home, Ellory is obliged to give the ship back to Obadiah and his son to the U.S. army.
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