A British man who grew up in an upper-class British family, is disowned by his parents as a young man. He travels around the world and becomes a seaman. At age 30, he drowns in the San Francisco bay. He wakes up on a yacht, where he has been resuscitated using a breathing apparatus designed by the boat's owner. He realizes that the owner is his father, who does not recognize him. The father has become a scientist obsessed with bringing people back from the dead. The father hires the son to accompany him and his crew to an uncharted island in the South Seas. Once they arrive on the island, the son is horrified to learn that he will be the subject of resuscitation experiments. The father plans to kill him and revive him over and over again using resuscitation machines of his own invention. The son reveals the truth about their relationship, but the father doesn't seem to care that this is his long-lost son. Stuck on the island with no way out, the son is forced to follow a strict diet and exercise regime, and he is guarded at all times by the father's servants. First, he is killed by strychnine poisoning and left dead for 20 hours before being revived by an air-tight chamber. Then, the father kills him off with various poisons, electrocution, asphyxiation, suffocation, etc. Each time, the father lets him stay dead for a few days before trying to revive him with different methods. One time, the father keeps the son's dead body frozen for three months and experiments on him without the son's consent. The son hatches an escape plan by combining the concepts of electrolysis and energy to create a powerful force that destroys living forms when they come into contact with it. He makes the force out of two powerful batteries connected to magnets. He sets a trap outside of his room, killing his father and the guards.