A surprise hurricane sweeps across the small Bahamian island where Warren Early, age fifteen, is spending the summer. He is swept to sea with his dog Conchshell and knocked unconscious.

The boy awakens at the secret camp of the famous pirate Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard. Crew members suspect Warren is a spy for hated Governor Rogers and prepare to hang him. Blackbeard intervenes.

Marty Read befriends Warren. Together they participate in the capture of a French merchant ship and a hostage plan to extort gold and medicine from the townspeople of Charles Town. The plot fails. Blackbeard is captured.

Warren and Marty manage to free their captain and return to Nassau where they meet Calico Jack Rackman and Anne Bonney. The four pirates sail off to the Jamaica and seize a Spanish merchant ship with deadly results.

Can Warren ever return to his frantic parents? What is the secret Marty has hidden so cleverly? Will the two friends be able to continue their growing relationship over the span of two hundred years?