While heading for France, the Dawn is seized again, this time by a French privateer, and Miles finds himself caught between British and French violations of neutral commerce as he repeatedly struggles to recover and preserve his ship, only to lose the vessel and much of his fortune after a series of dangerous voyages and disasters that leave him alone on a fragile raft in the Atlantic. After surviving and eventually working his way back to America with Marble and Neb as an ordinary seaman, he discovers that reports of his death have spread and that Clawbonny has been foreclosed and sold, while Lucy’s efforts to protect his people and property gradually reveal both the depth of her devotion and the falsity of his assumptions about Drewett. Miles and Lucy finally acknowledge their long-standing love and marry at Clawbonny, and the novel closes by looking back on the later fates of Rupert and the others while affirming loyalty, moral character, and enduring affection over wealth, vanity, and social position.
