Midway in that period of Ireland\'s history during which, according to historians, the distressful country had none—to be more precise, on a spring morning early in the eighteenth century, and the reign of George the First, a sloop of about seventy tons burthen was beating up Dingle Bay, in the teeth of a stiff easterly breeze.

In The Wild Geese, prominent Japanese novelist Ogai Mori offers a poignant story of unfulfilled love. The young heroine, Otama, is forced by poverty to become a moneylender's mistress. Her dawning consciousness of her predicament brings the novel to a touching climax.