American Eleanor Reed travels to the interior of Africa with her father Roger, who hopes to capture animals for zoos, her mother Penny, who sneezes and complains incessantly, and her fiancé, Nevin Potter, who wants to kill all the animals he can. On the steamship, Ben Alleu Bey, an Oxford-educated royal playboy, who has a hundred wives, sends Eleanor a ruby. She refuses it and, at the landing, beats and insults Bey when he thrashes a servant for bumping into her. Bey, who controls the tribes of the interior, makes secret arrangements with Olaf, the Reed party guide, to have Eleanor abducted by tribesmen near Bey's palace. During the safari, Tarzan, a white man whom the jungle animals obey, curiously watches the group in hiding. When a leopard gets too close to them, he calls it away, and when Eleanor, alone, gets stuck in mud, Tarzan pulls her out. No one in the party believes her story about the mysterious man. After Eleanor and Nevin put two lion cubs in cages, their angry mother enters Eleanor's tent, but Tarzan sends the lioness away and retrieves the cubs. When Nevin cages Tarzan's chimpanzee, Tarzan frees all the caged animals that the party have captured and carries Eleanor to his tree, after which they swing on vines, swim and sleep next to each other. The next day, as Tarzan gets some coconuts, the party finds Eleanor. Dejected at finding her gone, Tarzan is comforted by the chimp. Near Bey's palace, tribesmen capture Eleanor after Nevin cowardly swims away when a crocodile chases her, but Tarzan breaks into the palace and rescues her. As the party prepares to go home, Nevin, jealous of Eleanor's concern at leaving Tarzan, shoots at him and grazes his arm. Tarzan throws Nevin off, and on the boat back, Penny wonders what the people back home will think, while in the jungle, Eleanor swims with Tarzan.