Cirrus@Austlit

The three Watson brothers sailing their private yacht save a castaway from a drifting life-boat off the Victoria coast. He shares with them a map and a convict's autobiography which links their dead father's yacht, stolen from Geelong Harbour while he was gold prospecting in the early 1850s, and a cache of gold stolen from a gold ship simultaneously. The autobiography is violent - tracing the narrator's career from transportation to Australia for mutiny to his command of a bloody and notorious bush-ranging gang in Victoria to the theft of their father's yacht and the gold from the neighboring ship. The narrative is marked principally by the unscrupulous and ruthless plans to murder and double-cross his gang so that he could claim more of the gold. The murder of the navigator, the rescue of a castaway and his navigational assistance, a typhoon on Fiji, the stranding of the yacht on an island, the escape of the few remaining crew and the encounter of the brothers and their castaway (the rescued navigator) with the convict leader who has dug up the treasure and is dying, conclude the tale. (PB)