 In the days of the tall ships and colonial rule of the South Pacific, a naive native sailor working as first mate on an island hopping windjammer is unjustly jailed in Tahiti for striking a racist planter with government connections. His attempts to escape imprisonment and return to his home island and young wife are contrasted with the attitudes of the white colonials, including a humanitarian physician, a "by the book" governor and a sadistic jailer, as well as the forces of natural justice in the form of a devastating hurricane. Written by the authors of "Mutiny on the Bounty"