That the Gosling Company should become a theatrical company was a preposterous idea—as crazy as the actual fact that Captain Jake Dexter, once a respectable Yankee mariner, was now an infamous pirate. Yet, he had already travelled such a long, strange path as a fortune-hunting adventurer that metamorphosing into the manager of the first theatre in Sacramento was just another step.

But Jake Dexter could never imagine the danger that this would involve for his actress, Harriet Gray, or that his own life would be so threatened.