When Jake Zane arrives in San Francisco, a country boy in a wild and wooly city full of gold seekers, he finds himself among city folks both fair and crooked, saloons filled with ladies of the night and seamen off the 800 ships abandoned in the harbor. Soon, he’s crosswise with the Wallaby’s, San Francisco’s most dangerous Sydney Duck gang. Luckily, he has one friend, Lord Stanley-Smyth, a man of stature indebted to Jake. He soon finds himself at sea, working on one of the Lord’s coastal lumber schooners, then on a freighter bound to the Sandwich Islands. Jake is learning every step of the way. A coming-of-age novel full of blades, gun smoke, and danger lurking around every corner.