A sabotaged Pan Am flying boat crashes en route from Los Angeles to Hong Kong in 1936. It is given up for lost. However, seven passengers survive a watery death. The passenger list includes a movie star actress, society matron, newspaper reporter, Roosevelt cabinet member, African huntress, Sikh chauffeur, and a Princeton-trained lawyer by the name of Michelangelo Barrier. Without food and only the clothes falling off their backs, they stumble upon a terrible secret. Who is going to believe such an account? Who will take the word of presumed dead passengers in a dark, murky lost world?