Reporter H. Joseph Miller has spent five years covering the San Diego waterfront and intensely dislikes it. Hoping that he can get a job on a paper in the East and marry his Vermont sweetheart, Miller plans to break a story about the smuggling of Chinese into the country by fisherman Eli Kirk. When he is sent to investigate a girl swimming naked, Miller learns that the girl is Kirk's daughter Julie and decides to romance her to get the story. After Kirk drops a Chinese man overboard with chains around his ankles when Miller and the Coast Guard arrive to investigate, Kirk tells Julie that they will have to move on, maybe to Singapore, as soon as he gets enough money. Julie encourages Miller's flirting and, during the next two weeks, succeeds in making Miller see the beauty of the waterfront. As they fall in love, Julie inspires Miller to improve the novel he has been working on for five years. The night before Julie is to leave with her father, she sleeps over in Miller's room. At breakfast, after she announces that she is staying, Miller learns from her where Kirk is due to dock and notifies the Coast Guard. At the docks, after Miller rips open the belly of a large shark to reveal a Chinese man inside, Kirk is shot while escaping. Although Miller tells Julie that he really does love her, she sends him away. Miller locates Kirk, who shoots him in the arm. Julie arrives with a motorboat, but says she can't leave Miller to die. Although he is weak and dying, Kirk, seeing that Julie loves Miller, takes him to shore, at the risk of getting caught, so that Miller can get a doctor. Kirk then dies. When Miller recovers, he finds that Julie has moved into his room. He tells her the ending of his novel, "he marries the girl," and embraces her.