The archipelago of the Swedish west coast in the 1840s. On a stormy night, the smuggler Håkan Haraldsson shoots a customs inspector and his crew of two men dead to escape arrest. Many years later the son of the customs inspector, Arve, meet Haraldssons daughter Ella. They fall in love but their budding romance is cut short when he is sent to Gothenburg to study. Meanwhile, when a ship is wrecked on their island, Ella fall in love with a survivor, captain Rosenberg, and very soon she is engaged with him. When Arve returns again, he has not forgotten about Ella.