When Humphrey Van Weyden finds himself struggling in the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay he thinks the worst that can happen to him is drowning. After he is rescued by the Ghost and its captain, Wolf Larsen, Humphrey discovers that there are fates far worse than death. On Larsen's hell-ship the dilettante hero is forced to slave as cabin boy and humble seaman. Over the seven months' voyage to the sealing grounds off Siberia he engages in an epic duel with his ruthlessly Nietzschean skipper, a conflict which ends with the death of one of them.