Contains spoilers for this episode.
Walter Raleigh returns to London with the Queen's admiration and an audience eager for stories of exploration. Blackadder resents the attention and refuses to join the celebrations until Melchett brings him to court. Mocked for lacking an explorer's courage, he announces a voyage around the dangerous Cape of Good Hope. Elizabeth even suggests marriage when he returns, encouraging Edmund to hire the alarming, legless Captain Redbeard Rum for the expedition.
Once at sea with Percy and Baldrick, Edmund reveals that he intends to spend a few months in France and come home claiming a heroic voyage. Rum approves because he never knew the route to the Cape. Unfortunately, he cannot navigate to France either. With no crew to correct him, the party drifts for months, exhausts its supplies and begins drinking urine. Rum eventually announces their arrival in Southampton, although the lava, tropical vegetation and inhabitants suggest a very different destination.
Blackadder, Percy and Baldrick finally return without their captain. They tell Nursie, who had hoped to marry Rum, that the islanders ate him, and give her his beard as a keepsake. Elizabeth has meanwhile become bored with explorers and replaces talk of marriage with a demand for presents. Edmund supplies a boomerang, then offers Raleigh and Melchett bottles of supposedly valuable wine. Both praise the drink, unaware that their souvenir is Baldrick's bottled urine.