Summary
A gilded cage of coin and covetousness snaps shut around Margaret Elkins when Henry Ames—her would-be suitor—wields a poison pen of fiduciary treachery, hollowing out her father’s fortune until the family name is a hollow bell. Believing Jim Hardwick the architect of her ruin, Margaret flees to a corrugated coast where the Pacific gnaws at land’s end, its spray a baptism of salt and spite. She courts vengeance while Jim, oblivious, courts her; their duel of glances is more tempest than flirtation. Then a biblical sandstorm scours the shore, unsealing the ribs of a century-old galleon like a cadaver coughing up secrets. Gold doubloons wink beneath moon-mad torchlight, and two rival mobs—one led by the woman scorned, the other by the man enchanted—hack at the dunes with pick and prayer. In the crucible of greed Margaret orders Jim clapped in the vessel’s worm-eaten cabin, only to overhear Henry’s gloating confession: the true viper was always the accountant, not the sailor. A mutinous tide of drunken diggers swarms, and Jim—bursting from his prison—snatches Margaret from their lecherous claws. Amid embers and contrition, love is confessed, the ledger of blame wiped clean by a single tide.
Synopsis
Believing that Margaret Elkins would marry him if they were of the same financial status, Henry Ames misuses his power of attorney and ruins the young woman's father, Thomas Elkins. Because she believes Jim Hardwick responsible, Margaret meets him on the Pacific coast, and while she plans her revenge, he falls in love with her. When a furious sandstorm uncovers a wrecked ship on the beach, Margaret and Jim each hire a gang of men to dig out the treasure, but Margaret finally orders her men to attack Jim and lock him inside the cabin. Next, Henry arrives, and when Margaret overhears him talking with Jim, she realizes that Jim is innocent. After Jim rescues her from the workmen, who, on a drunken spree, have attacked her, Margaret confesses that she loves him, and all ends happily.
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