The dashing Captain Sylla plies the Caribbean with his close-knit crew: The Marquis, a former slave who sports a powdered periwig; the clever, craggy-faced Dutch; the burly, bearded Lenoir; and first mate Olivier, given to gloom and considered a bringer of bad luck. This is likely because he spends his time composing log entries addressed to a fictive British Commodore who will someday capture them. But perhaps he is the only clear-eyed one among them: luckless outcasts of imperial navies, these pirates'' days of freedom and fraternity are numbered, as the forces of law, order, and capital bear down on them.