The story is simply that of misplaced confidence, that of deception practiced by a renegade Englishman of attractive personality and high social training upon characters more simple and true-hearted. He has left a wife behind him to retrieve lost fortunes and social position in the ivory trade where climatic conditions are such that the place, Sierra Leone, is known as "the white man's grave." This renegade, before starting on an expedition to the unexplored interior, trifles with the affections of Maida Verne, a French Sudanese girl, who has been educated at the mission, and becomes something of a favorite with the English colony. She is engaged to the son of a native king, a young man modernized by an education at Oxford, but still retaining the best of native ideals. He is almost unnaturally magnanimous in stepping aside when he believes that Maida is to wed the Englishman, but he discovers that the latter has a wife living while the two are on the expedition returning from a successful search for ivory. The two men fight in a canoe, and the native is apparently drowned. The renegade escapes, but the native returns to their starting point in time to save Maida and execute terrible vengeance.