Manly Treegate, the orphaned son of Peter Treegate's brother, is taken into his Uncle Peter's family, where he chafes under his uncles's stern discipline. The boy finally persuades his uncle to let him go with him on a business journey to Norfolk. There in the bay is the British frigate Leopard. It fires on the American Chesapeake, brings it to surrender, and impresses three of its seamen as deserters from the British Navy.
Manly and his uncle are in Norfolk when this provocative action occurs. Within one day of his arrival, Manly manages to get not only himself but also his hired boatman, the bitterly complaining Mr. Coffin, captured by that same ship and charged with aiding a deserter, a sailor they had found in the bay. And thus Manly Treegate found himself pressed into service as powder-boy to one of the forty guns on the "sleek, black hunting cat," the British frigate Leopard.
Life aboard the frigate is brutish and cruel, almost past bearing, but young Treegate hardens under it, dreaming constantly of escape. He is involved in sea battles, grimly observing the action first-hand from the gun deck, before making his escape into the service of a Haitian pirate ship and becoming the personal property of Mama Amelie, "a black crone, in a blood-stained rag of a dress with a cutlass almost as big as herself, hanging from her neck." A touching relationship develops between them, and it is due to Mama Amelie that Manly, after many adventures, is finally returned to his family in Salem, Mass.
—from the book
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