1677. Snatched from an Irish village by Barbary corsairs, seventeen-year-old Hector Lynch is sold at auction in Algiers. He is befriended by fellow captive Dan, a Miskito Indian from the Caribbean. The two friends escape the horrors of the slave barracks, and serve aboard a Turkish ship, which is sunk at sea. By a savage twist of fortune they are condemned to further slavery - when they are chained to the oar bench of a French galley with vagabonds and convicts for company. Hector is driven by the need to find out what happened to his sister, Elizabeth, who was also kidnapped by the corsairs. He learns the chilling truth when he and his colourful band of brothers are shipwrecked off the coast of Morocco