Frobisher is a cashiered Royal Navy ex-officer. He is approached to run some arms to the rebels in Korea, and thus make his fortune. This fails, and the arms get into the hands of the legitimate government. After some vicissitudes he finds himself in China, and talking to the above admiral, who offers him the command of a battleship, with the prospect of taking part in a war against Japan. He does this but loses his ship in a storm towards the end of the book. Meanwhile he has found the lost millions hidden away by Genghiz Khan many centuries beforehand. He has no hesitation in purloining these, and eventually on getting back to England, buying his way back into grace by presenting the nation with a number of brand-new battleships, for which bit of
sleaze he is given a baronetcy, and restored to the Navy List.