The ship's medic, Dr. Schumann, takes a special interest in La Condesa, a countess from Cuba who has an opiate addiction which he accommodates with prescriptions. She is being transported to a Spanish prison on Tenerife. Her sense of doom is contrasted with the doctor's initial determination to fight the forces of oppression, embodied by his insistence that the people in steerage be treated like human beings rather than cargo. The doctor himself has a secret heart condition, and his sympathy for the countess soon evolves into love, though both realise it is a hopeless passion.