Off the Southernmost tip of South America on Staten Island, a lighthouse has been erected.

No sooner has the dispatch boat departed than appears on the other end of the island a band of desperate pirates turned wreckers, who by the display of false lights have been luring vessels onto the rocks.

The accounts of their capture of the lighthouse, the appearance of the shipwrecked American, Davis, and of the daring tricks resorted to delaying the departure of the pirates make up one of Jules Verne's finest adventure stories, and the basis of the 1971 Kirk Douglas film, The Light at the Edge of the World!