Summary
Eve is not your typical silent-era heroine; she is a rough-and-tumble dreamer living on her father’s freighter, her mind perpetually clouded by the sensationalist plots of dime novels. When her father’s ship docks in a bustling Chinese port, Eve’s thirst for adventure leads her into the path of Bob Britton, a wealthy tea-planter’s son who mistake’s her boyish attire and demeanor for the real thing. What begins as a playful case of mistaken identity takes a sharp turn into high-stakes peril when the notorious pirate Chang Fang raids the town. Seizing the opportunity to live out her pulp-fiction fantasies, Eve effectively kidnaps Bob, dragging him into a chaotic sequence of events that sees them both captured by the pirate fleet. Within the pirate stronghold, the power dynamics shift wildly as Eve uses her wits—and a large rug—to outmaneuver her captors, eventually forcing a bizarrely romantic resolution under the threat of a missionary’s psalms.
Synopsis
Eve, the boyish daughter of a freighter captain stationed in a Chinese port, is addicted to dime novels and romantic daydreams. Going ashore with her father, she meets Bob Britton, the son of a wealthy tea-planter, who teases her, thinking she is a boy. When Chang Fang, a Chinese pirate, stages a raid on the town, Eve uses the situation to shanghai Bob aboard her father's vessel, which is then taken by the pirates. Bob is taken to Chang's stronghold with Eve, who conceals herself in a large rug; when she reveals herself, Chang orders the room cleared, but she binds him hand and foot, as she did earlier to Bob. Eve and Bob escape, pursued by the pirate band. Chang is popped into a jar and ejected from a window by a missionary, who then reads psalms to Chang while Eve ropes him; drawn up to the window, Bob and Eve compel the missionary to marry them.
