Captain "Wolf" Larsen, the absolute master of a seal schooner, is a mystic and philosopher, though he rules his men with an iron hand. On a ferry going from San Francisco to Oakland, Van Weyden, a critic, and Maud Brewster, a novelist, meet in masquerade costumes and are forced overboard when their boat collides with a steamer. Humphrey, then Maud, are picked up by Larsen's crew. Because of her costume, Maud is taken for a boy and placed in the custody of Mugridge, the cook, who attempts to attack her upon discovering her identity. Larsen takes her under his protection and decides to marry her; but as the ceremony begins, the crew mutinies, and Larsen is stricken with blindness as he faces the rebels. The ship is set afire, and though Humphrey and Maud are rescued by another steamer, Larsen, deserted by his crew, refuses to quit his ship and is enveloped in flames.

Bill is a gambler, whose friend Scipio goes in search of his wife Jessie. Jessie, fed up with her life of poverty, has run off with the wealthy and villainous James. She has left behind her two children on James' promise that she can send for them later. Scipio leaves the tots with Bill when he goes on his search..

Billy Buell (William Farnum), a stranger involving himself with a long-standing mountain feud. The Benchleys and the Camps have been feuding ever since Lew Camp (J. Morris Foster) learned that his daughter Nellie (Doris May) was stolen by Jacob Benchley (Arthur Morrison) to replace a dead Benchley baby. Buell, who has fallen in love with Nellie, returns her to her mother (Virginia True Boardman). That doesn't sit well with the Benchley clan, who arrive for a final shootout.

The hero must solve the murder of his benefactor within six months in order to inherit a valuable ranch.

Teddy Gloucester, one of the group of jazz age "nice people," is caught in a farmhouse during a storm with her intoxicated companion, Scotty. A stranger (Billy Wade) also seeking shelter saves her from Scotty's unwelcome attentions but not from the scandal which results from her father's discovery of her and Scotty--alone--the next morning. Hurt by the snubbing she receives from her friends, Teddy settles down and agrees to become an old-fashioned wife to Billy.

The death of her clergyman husband causes Mrs. Stanley, young mother of teenage twins, to change her style of life.

Ben Jordan runs away after accidentally setting fire to a barn in his small New England community. He returns when his mother dies to find that she has left everything to her ward, Jane Crosby.

What must a man do in order to put an end to his bachelorhood? For George Finch, one of nature's white mice and probably the worst artist ever to put brush to canvas, there are many obstacles. Undoubtedly the greatest is his beloved Molly's fearsome stepmother, Mrs. Waddington, who has her eye on an eligible English lord for a son-in-law. Luckily, George has an ally in sharp-witted Hamilton Beamish, an old family friend of the Waddingtons, not to mention George's butler, Mullett, and his light-fingered girlfriend, Fanny, whose valuable skills are of particular interest to the would-be father-in-law.

While visiting Monte Carlo with her aunt, Rosalie Dean meets a young man, Maxfield Gray who is ready to kill himself because of his losses at the roulette wheel. She stops him from doing so, and lends him some money to win back what he's lost. He does, but they're only happy for a short while before Max is arrested for the murder of his ex-wife in the States.

Convict Bill Hyde and his friend, Danny Dorgan, break out of prison, but in running from the guards, Danny is mortally wounded. The local doctor, Evan Thomas, tries so hard to save Danny that later, when Bill and the doctor meet in Alaska, the two become friends. A dying man gives his mine to the doctor, but upon discovering that it is worthless, Bill sells it to a crook named John Wesley Slayforth...

A ranch foreman captures a notorious gang of gold thieves. He ties them up and leaves them for a pursuing posse while he goes out to find the gold they stole. When the posse arrives, the gang's leader convinces them that the foreman is actually the gold thief, and the posse sets out in pursuit of him.

Fired from his job for shirking his duties, the 'Knight of the Plains' Bart Miller stumbles across a would-be stagecoach robbery and he rescues damsel in distress Betty Taylor. He takes Betty and her pretty girlfriends to the ranch of her father Bill Taylor. Meanwhile Taylor's foreman Luke Hatton is plotting to rustle his boss' herd with the aid of the corrupt lawyer Harkness.