Tristan le Sauvage left the Purple Isle upon a knightly quest-to recover his sister from The Land of Seven Streams. Two months had passed since a great ship, with gleaming sails, had swooped like a falcon upon Purple Isle, and carried thence that white dove, Columbe the Fair. In the Land of Seven Streams, Tristan finds many other knightly services in the struggle between papacy and people, and again, between the broken ranks of the Christians and the Saracen hordes.