Shark Rawley is a sailor aboard the tramp steamer Aurora , presided over by a brutal captain named Sanchez. While ashore one night, Shark and Sanchez encounter society girl Doris Selby and her friends on a slumming expedition at a dockside bar called the Wine Room. Entrapped by some of the predatory characters that infest the place, Doris escapes through a cellar only to abducted by Sanchez who then takes her to the Aurora.

Gene Romaine lives in the solitude of Tall Pine Mountain with her father, fire warden for the Stanton Lumber Company. They live alone, but her mother's grave is in the little clearing and the father has promised never to leave it. To them comes McDaniels, the logging boss, who is attracted by Jean and offers her father to discard his Indian wife for the young girl. Romaine indignantly refuses and is threatened with dismissal. Gene, knowing he cannot bear to leave his wife's grave, assents to the marriage in spite of her father's protests. Stanton, chief owner of the lumber company, maroons his worthless son in the woods, in the hope of reforming him. Gene takes care of him when he sprains his ankle, and he protects her from McDaniels and is blamed for the murder of the boss when his vengeful Indian wife stabs him in the back.

A musical comedy in two acts based on Adolf Philipp's own play.