'Shortly after returning home to Scotland after the War, Ian Douglas abandons his wife and three-year-old daughter, Kay, and giving no reason, goes off to the South Seas. On the death of Mrs Douglas, her brother, Robert Gilchrist, receives a letter from the absent man, giving his address as Tuala Lopa, an island in the Central Pacific. Gilchrist, who considers his brother-in-law to be a scoundrel and wife-deserter, does not reply, even though, before he went, Douglas left a large sum of money in trust for his daughter, to be hers when she is twenty-one.
Attaining her majority, Kay writes to her father, care of the post-master at the island, where he had last been heard of. Now there are only two white men living there - Tate, an unscrupulous trader, and Robert Clay, an American.
Kay's letter falls into Tate's hands, and, with the connivance of Captain Kaufman, master of the brigantine Sapphic, he decides to impersonate the girl's father, with a view to obtaining possession of the money. He writes a letter purporting to be from Ian Douglas, asking her to join him at Tuala Lopa.
On the last stage of the journey she travels on Kaufman's brigantine, meeting the mate, a New Zealander named Riley. Riley, distrusting both Kaufman and Tate, suspects them of some evil design, but cannot make out what it is.
When the brigantine enters the harbour of Tuala Lopa Tate meets Kay, but while they are talking the vessel is boarded by a planter named Ross, from the neighbouring island of Vena, who acuses Kaufman of dropping opium overboard for someone on Vena to pick up. Tate draws Kay aside so that she cannot hear the argument.
When the Sapphic sails that evening, leaving her on Tuala Lopa, the girl feels a little lonely and uneasy. The departure of the brigantine had severed her last link with the world.' (Publisher's abstract)
