Robert Gunn stared with stunned surprise at the Oriental merchant whose servants had drugged and brought him to this secluded, incredibly luxurious mansion.
Now his captor offered Gunn the choice between either accepting three thousand British pounds in return for performing a small service, or meeting swift and brutal death.
"What is it that you wish me to do?" Gunn asked as quietly as he could.
"I wish you to make love to my daughter, Mr. Gunn. To mount her, and mount her again, until she is with child by a white man."
This was Robert Gunn's introduction to the China coast. The young Englishman little suspected that he would remember it later as one of the least shocking and least shameful things he had done on his ruthless search for money and power...
It was the year of 1833 when Robert Gunn arrived on the China coast. Only the feeblest of defences now protected the vast and proud Chinese Empire from the ravenous greed of Western traders, and their opening wedge for conquest was the sale of forbidden opium to the native masses.
This was the path that Robert Gunn chose to follow... a path that led him through a maze of violence and intrigue, lust and treachery, to a height of power beyond most men's dreams — and to the ultimate depths of personal corruption.
Here is a magnificent novel of an age of plunder—and of a fearless freebooter who raped an empire.