Left in Boston by the H.M.S. Dolphin crew when they discover her true sex, Jacky Faber finds herself navigating entirely new waters. It turns out that bloodthirsty buccaneers have nothing on the young ladies at the Lawson Peabody School! As Jacky observes, "...they're like any bunch of thirty or so cats thrown in a sack and shaken up good. They're mean in ways that boys never even thought of being." It isn't long before Jacky shows her true colors by being arrested for "exposing a Female Part" (her knee) while jigging in the streets and is "busted down" to serving girl instead of student. Jacky soldiers on, getting herself into scrapes that her darling beau midshipman Jaimy Fletcher couldn't even begin to imagine, including uncovering a shady minister's evil secret and fixing a horse race with voodoo. And where in the world is seafaring Jaimy? As her letters to him continue to go unanswered, Jacky grows more and more worried. Still, at book's end she takes an assignment as "lady's companion" to the captain's wife aboard a whaler headed for London.