Fate seems to have it in for Yann Calec, unjustly sentenced and harassed by guards in a godforsaken Colombian prison camp. He is saved from execution by when Ocaña shows up, a rebel intellectual tasked with smuggling him across the country to the mysterious Professor Condé. But the harrowing, perilous journey is nothing next to what awaits: a fortuitous return to the Belle Hélène, the doomed tramp steamer Calec once captained, still bound for its fateful date with a U-boat torpedo. Will Calec manage to save the ship and his new friends with their precious archeological cargo?