Young inventor Frank Rude, Jr. is confident that his airship Thunderbird will win the first world's first Transatlantic Race. All he and his crew including cousin Charlie, sister Inanna, detective Denver Doll, the Woman in Black and orphans PS and Kurt have to do is escape from a floating island and its giant snake guardian, defeat a group of Fenian terrorists, retrieve a precious religious artifact and rout an exotic animal smuggler. But after the airship is sabotaged in Oxford, to the rescue comes the mysterious Jean Ember Myth. Is the femme fatale there to help Frank, or to steal his greatest invention?