Erzählt wird das weitere Leben Jack Vincents, der wegen Verstoßes gegen die Zollgesetze zur Deportation nach Australien verurteilt wird. Vor der atemberaubenden Kulisse der pazifischen Inseln im Jahre 1810 beginnt ein harter Kampf ums Überleben, in deren Verlauf sich Jack mehrfach bewähren muss.

Jack Vincent, an aristocrat forced by circumstances to become a smuggler, is caught and transported on the IIMS Success to a penal colony on Norfolk Island, off the New Zealand coast. Unhappily for Vincent, the ship's captain is none other than his brother-in-law, Lt.Harry Anderson. The two men have quarreled violently in the past over Anderson's treatment of Vincent's sister, and now Anderson subjects him to particularly harsh and humiliating treatment. Vincent stages a successful mutiny, casting Anderson and those loyal to him adrift, and plans to sail to America. When the Success is shipwrecked, Vincent is one of three survivors; but Anderson also survives the storm, and vows to pursue Vincent until he sees him hanged at Execution Dock. So begins a fight for survival for Vincent and his crew, complete with hostile natives, unscrupulous sea-traders, crazed prophets and buried treasure.