Reluctantly keeping his promise to sell his fleet of blockade-running vessels when he sensed the War was drawing to a close, Captain Rudy Blake returns to the States in order to fulfill one other obligation: bring Elspeth out of Charleston and deliver her safely to England. As Rose Theodore predicted, the young child-bride refuses to go unless accompanied by her parents. Obstinate that he will not bring the slave trader, Rudy offers her an ultimatum: come with me or stay behind. Unable to make up her mind, he departs for Atlanta where he intends to wait out the waning months before writing her off forever and seeing to his own escape. Intent on having the gunrunner save herself and her husband as well as her daughter, Mrs. Odanagh and her family arrive in Atlanta, where she sends Elspeth to Ruth’s bachelor rooms, hoping to manipulate his feelings into serving her wishes. She nearly succeeds but as the months pass it becomes obvious they have waited too long: the Federal Army is on the doorstep of Atlanta and it is now too late to escape. As the enemy enters the city environs, Rudy’s loyalty turn to the Blake Brigade. Helping his black “crew” save victims of their church bombing, he discovers his favorite, Cottonball, critically injured. Risking his life to procure a horse and wagon, he takes the boy to a spiritual healer and then departs the burning city, certain, now, of only one thing: he must go to war and die before there can be any resolution.