The nutmeg of consolation

The fourteenth novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series finds Aubrey and Maturin shipwrecked, harassed by pirates and then in the brutal penal colonies of New South Wales. They have been stranded on an uninhabited island in the Dutch East Indies, attacked by ferocious Malay pirates. They contrive their escape, but after a stay in Batavia and a change of ship, they are caught up in a night chase in the fiercely tidal waters and then embroiled in the much more insidious conflicts of the terrifying penal settlements of New South Wales.