- Prof. Dislow and his daughter, Ruth, are passengers on the trading vessel Barbuda. It's soon revealed that the crew was infiltrated by gangsters scheming to steal the cargo. With all the men bound and gagged, what can Ruth do about it?
- Professor Dislow, a celebrated New York physician, receives a summons from a colleague in South America, requesting him to come at once to attend a patient who is in a critical condition. He finds that no passenger steamer is leaving for three days, and his granddaughter, Ruth, shows him a shipping notice to the effect that the freighter "Barbuda" will sail on the following day for the port he wants to reach. He decides to try to engage passage on the freighter, and Ruth, after much persuasion, gets him to promise to take her along with him. "Beau" Harvey is the leader of a gang of gunmen. The police have been active of late and Harvey is convinced that it is time to seek pastures new. He has been tipped off by one of the "Barbuda's" crew that the vessel is to carry a large shipment of silver, to be used in a South American manufacturing plant, when she leaves on her coming trip. Through this man, he makes arrangements for ten of the crew to desert on the night before the steamer sails, Harvey paying them to do so. Harvey then takes ten of his men and applies to the captain for work aboard the ship. Left in the lurch at the last moment, the captain signs them on, and Professor Dislow and Ruth, having arranged for a passage, come aboard only a few hours later. Harvey's plan is to get as many of the crew to join them as are willing to share in his enterprises, and to seize the ship and its cargo of silver. Meantime, Ruth has become friendly with Tom Avery, the first mate. On the second day out, the Professor receives a wireless message that the patient he is starting to visit has died, and the captain promises to try to send him and Ruth back by an inward bound steamer. That night, Harvey and his men throw overboard three of the crew who are faithful to the captain, and seven others are killed by drinking coffee which Harvey has poisoned. The Captain, Professor Dislow and Avery are then seized, bound, and thrown into a stateroom and the wireless operator murdered. The second mate is forced to join the mutineers. A storm arises and the propeller shaft is broken. The ship runs aground on a reef just off a small island. Harvey has already cut the wireless aerial down, so that help cannot be summoned in that way. The mutineers prepare to go ashore. Ruth persuades Harvey to let her speak with her grandfather, before leaving the ship, and the professor gives her a bottle of morphine tablets, urging her, should the worst come to the worst, to swallow the contents. She is then taken ashore by the mutineers. Harvey orders her to prepare a meal for them and she empties the phial or morphine into the coffee pot. The mutineers fall into a heavy slumber, and Ruth makes her escape to the "Barbuda." She releases her grandfather, the captain and Avery, and Avery repairs the wireless apparatus. He sends a message, which is answered by the U.S.S. "Freedom," the battleship adding the message that, being on the other side of the island, it will soon be able to rescue them. Meantime, the boat in which Ruth has returned to the "Barbuda" has drifted back to the island, and the mutineers, upon being aroused by Harvey, who is the first to recover consciousness, clamber into it and row toward the ship. But as they approach on the one side, the launch from the warship comes up from the other. No sooner do the mutineers clamber aboard the "Barbuda" and attack the captain and the others, when the bluejackets attack them in turn. The gunmen are made prisoners, and taken aboard the battleship along with the professor and the others. Some of the battleship's crew are left to guard the "Barbuda" until a ship can be sent to transfer her cargo, and as the battleship steams off, bound for Key West. Avery and Ruth, seated on the deck, are plighting their troth.—Moving Picture World synopsis
It looks like we don't have any synopsis for this title yet. Be the first to contribute.
Learn moreContribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content