Kyle Severin, young sailor from Fishtown, Philadelphia, works on foreign vessels where he will not be obliged to talk about his murky and troubled past. In Sweden he meets a lovely student whose father happens to be a powerful and influential magnate objecting to their torrid romance. Severin is practically Shanghaid out of Sweden, placed aboard an an old rust bucket freighter, ' the Mantra, ' heading for the West Coast of Africa. The ship is already suffering from ethnic tensions dividing the Scandinavians and the foreign mariners in the crew. The conflicts become sharper when the 'Black Crew' boards in Sierra Leone to slave as cheap labor, be consigned to subsisting in a shabby tent on the forward hatch. Severin commits the error of lending his guitar to the Black Crew, the innocent gesture triggers totally disporportionate controversies, brawls, even accusations of murders. Before the Mantra even sails up the fabled river the ship is a volatile powder keg, it arrives in the upriver port of Matadi just as the Congo has becone independent, an occassion marked by tremendous confusion and violence. Belgian ex-colonial masters fleeeing the chaos and danger as passengers include a beautiful, mature woman who has a roving eye.