When Carruthers joins his friend Arthur Davies on his yacht Dulcibella, he is expecting a pleasant sailing holiday in the Baltic Sea. But the holiday turns into an adventure of a different kind. He and Davies soon find themselves sailing in the stormy waters of the North Sea, exploring the channels and sandbanks around the German Frisian Islands, and looking for a secret - a secret that could mean great danger for England. Erskine Childers` novel, published in 1903, was the first great modern spy story, and is still as exciting to read today as it was a hundred years ago.