The Flaming Sword

Summary

A bankrupt golden-boy, Steve, stages a macabre farewell supper, then lets the tide carry him toward self-annihilation; instead, the same ocean coughs him onto a fog-curtained atoll where a lighthouse hermit and his moon-pale daughter, Meera, have lived quarantined from the world’s moral rot. Steve, sun-scorched and half-dead, becomes Meera’s first vision of mankind—simultaneously savior and serpent—while her father, Calhoun, nurses an ancient grievance against the castaway’s bloodline. When Maisie—Steve’s urbide torch-bearer—tracks her presumed lover across the shipping lanes, she detonates a lie that ricochets through the lantern room like a kerosene firework, toppling Calhoun into a stroke of fury and absolution. The film ends with a cutter slicing toward Manhattan, its sails swollen with second chances, the horizon smoldering like a cauterized wound.

Synopsis

After a life of dissipation, Steve, a young college chap who has been unfortunate in his business career, concludes that life is not worth living and contemplates suicide. Among his associates is a girl named Maisie with whom his name has been coupled by his intimates. Steve gives a banquet and announces that he is bankrupt and that his friends are looking upon him for the last time. After the affair Steve goes to his apartment, puts his affairs in order and slowly walks to the waterfront where he hires a small boat and the last seen of him is his boat, sail set leaving the inlet for the open sea. Maisie, realizing that Steve intends to injure himself, attempts to follow, but is too late. Steve drifts out to sea and after days of misery is washed up on a beach of a small island where he is found by a girl named Meera who lives there with her father and several servants. Meera's father had suffered a great wrong in his early life and took the position as lighthouse keeper on this island where he could live as a hermit and forget his troubles. Meera has never seen anyone except her father and the servants, and to her Steve appeared as a Viking. A strong attachment springs up between the two. Meera's father, who has refused to allow anyone but Government officials to enter the island, takes a liking to Steve and is prevailed upon to allow him to stay there. However, when Calhoun learns that Steve is the son of the man who wronged him, his sentiment takes a different turn. In the meanwhile Maisie learns from a traveling beachcomber that Steve is safe and living with Meera's father on the island. Engaging a boat, she follows him and in her awful rage and jealousy tells Meera's father that Steve is her husband. Calhoun, shouting "Like father, like son," convulsed with anger, falls into an unconscious state and Maisie, realizing that she has caused enough trouble, confesses that she falsely accused Steve. Calhoun recovers and Steve and Meera sail for New York, where the story ends as it should.