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.