An honest fisherman is persuaded to join the smuggling business when his fishing doesn't pay any more and he is faced with ruin. He joins the gamble, and as usual it ends up bad. His partner, who recruited him, fails to control his nerves in a moment of danger and gives them away when they are detained by the coast guard. Their French connection who delivered the smuggled brandy accidentally meets with his death on board their fishing vessel, and by his partner giving him away, Donald Houston gets the death penalty while his partner is only sentenced for life. But Donald has an ideal wife, Kathleen Byron, always the chief attraction of every film she is in, while his partner, Mr. Hansen, who recruited him, has nothing to live for or lose, but he has to stay on for life, being regularly visited by the priest who learns Donald's story. It's an interesting subject for moral discussion and consideration, and as everyone knows the death penalty in Britain was annulled a few years later - too late for Donald Houston, who probably would have been pardoned by a more reformed court. It's a noir adhering flawlessly to strict realism, it's a bleak story told straight with love and all human weaknesses and all, and as usual in British noirs the acting is wholly convincing.