Bill Saunders, a former prisoner of war living in England, whose experiences have left him unstable and violent, gets into a bar fight in which he kills a man and then flees. He hides out with the assistance of a nurse, Jane Wharton, who believes his story that the killing was an accident.
Centring on the activities of a gang of assorted criminals and, in particular, their leader – a vicious young hoodlum known as "Pinkie" – the film's main thematic concern is the criminal underbelly evident in inter-war Brighton.
Daubeney Carshott, a concert pianist, leaves London to dive for pearls on Thursday Island in the South Seas at the whim of Stella Raff, his fiancée. Once there, he discovers that the life he leads as a pearl diver is better in every way than his former existence as a social-lion pianist. He meets and falls in love with Lorna Quidley, after learning this Stella had send other suitors off in quest of a giant pearl for her.
After being fired from his job at a grocer, George, gets a job as a stableboy at a local stud farm run by the Fleming family. He befriends the horse Hotspur who is a favourite to win the Melbourne Cup, and develops a strong whistle which is used to make the horse run fast.