'Now the seas were more awesome in their raging insanity. Each mountain of glassy grey rose high above the raft, shielding it for a few seconds from the whip of the wind, its crest blowing off like the plume of an Etruscan helmet, before it slid down, collapsing upon itself in the tumbling roar of breaking water.' In German East Africa on the eve of the First World War two freebooting adventurers - one a flamboyant Irish American, the other an impeccable young Englishman - pit their wits against the gross German Commissioner from whose territory they are making their living as game hunters and ivory poachers. But the outbreak of war gives the signal for their private skirmishing to flare into a relentless vendetta pursued with devastating violence by land and sea, so that what begins as a comic escapade gives way to chilling horror ... Flynn O'Flynn is an American that has been living for years as a poacher in the veldts of East Africa. Sabastian Oldsmith is a 22 year old lad from England out to make is fortune in Australia, who ends up partnered with O'flynn in another of his money making schemes, against the lands of the German Kaiser. With the initiation of WW II the 'hostilities' between the Germans and O'Flynn is instantly escalated to new deadly levels, and with the murder of Olsmith's new baby daughter, O'Flynn's granddaughter, Germany has started a 'personal' war the results of which it can't conceive. A war of revenge that could be disastrous for the German Navy...