The voyage of the "Minnehaha" ends in disaster, and everyone, with the exception of Captain Barker, his daughter Elizabeth, and the mate, Bill, perish. Picked up by the whaler "Dakota" all seems well at first but Bill, half-crazy from exposure, becomes insanely jealous of the ship’s Captain Treavor. He accosts Elizabeth, who fights him off with Treavor coming to her aid. At one point he overpowers the remainder of the crew by taking them unawares and orders the ship to be put under way. Elizabeth, however, releases her father and the crew and retakes the ship. With Bill safely captured and bound with ropes the men give rousing cheers of thanksgiving for preservation from a sudden death.

Pirates attack the town of Martinique and capture the governor. But the townspeople rally back in a battle between ships.

Annie Jackson, living with her uncle, Horace Gregory, an old fisherman on Val Dez Island, is injured by an automobile. John Kingdon, who happens by, takes her in his machine to the hospital. There he learns to love her, but his advances are not wanted by her uncle, for his choice for his niece's hand is John Runyon. So when Annie returns to her home, and is told to marry Runyon, she refuses. In the meantime, Kingdon leaves for Honolulu. The vessel is wrecked. Kingdon, cast into the sea, clings half exhausted to a spar. By a trick of Fate, the wreck occurs on the rocks of Val Dez Island, and Annie sees the spar, rows out and succeeds in dragging it to shore, where Kingdon is recognized. The young people declare their love for each other, but Runyon plans to get Kingdon out of his way. The "best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee," and so Kingdon escapes the trap laid for him, and taking Annie with him to the mainland, they get married.

The dying mother, tells her only child, an orphan, of the wealth and power of her family and of her royal blood.

Back in '65 there was an old Southern fire eater, Pennington, and his daughter, Lucille, fell in love with Carr who was then a lieutenant in the small Yankee force that arrived in their city at the base of the mountains. When the confederacy fell, Pennington fled into the mountains with his daughter, rather than submit and there buried himself in the same place where Carr now lived with Rosemary. Several years passed and Lucille did not forget Carr, her Yankee lover. It was then that fate brought them together and old Pennington finally consented to the marriage, exacting a promise from Carr, not to take Lucille away from him and her mountain home.

Bill, who is with a bunch of cowboys on their way to town, picks up from the wreckage of a prairie schooner a little baby girl. Five years later the little girl, while running after butterflies, gets lost. Bill, waking up from his siesta, goes in search of her, but she cannot be found. The little girl, in the meantime, has climbed into a freighter's wagon. For twelve years she lives with him. One evening, while gambling with Mexican Pete, the freighter loses his money, and the girl, whom he had staked against the Mexican's winnings. But before the Mexican can take the girl away, Bill wins her from the Mexican, places her in the care of a woman neighbor and eventually marries her.