| Director | Cornel Wilde |
|---|---|
| Budget | $647,649 |
In colonial era Southern Africa, a professional safari guide leads a haughty investor and his troop on an elephant hunt through the African veldt. When the group comes to a local tribe's territory, the Africans require a toll to be paid for walking through their territory. The guide demands that they be paid, but the expedition's investor ignores this advice, brushes the Africans aside, and knocks down the tribal leader, who is barring his way. No violent retribution immediately occurs, and the Europeans are allowed to walk past the warriors guarding their border.
Later on, the guide and investor are arguing about their elephant kills. The investor brags about killing many more elephants than anyone else. The guide reminds him, "Everyone else only shot ivory-bearing elephants", to which the investor only laughs. During this conversation, warriors from a local village discover the poachers' camp, and armed only with spears, capture or kill the entire group.
After a victory march of the Europeans to the African's home village, most are executed using various torture methods. The guide is spared until the last. He is stripped naked and then an arrow is fired into the air. The guide is ordered at the point of a spear to run. Once he passes the fallen arrow, he is chased by another warrior in waiting. His pursuer throws a spear at him and misses, which the guide uses to kill his pursuer. Afterwards, he takes the warrior's sandals, loincloth and supplies then evades his pursuers. The warriors, grief-stricken about their dead friend, argue about continuing the hunt; some of them continue the pursuit.
Over the course of the pursuit, several of the warriors fall, either killed by the guide or the ravenous wildlife. The guide comes across an African village and camps nearby. He succeeds in stealing some barbecue and sneaking away, only to be awoken later by the rifle fire of Arab slavers. The guide cuts captured slaves from their rope bindings, has a minor melee with the slave guards, and prepares to meet the slaver captain in combat, just as the captain falls into a ditch filled with large thorns that enter his eyes.
Amid the chaos of the melee, the guide meets a young African girl who is hiding from the slavers. The guide escapes the slavers by jumping into a river, but is incapacitated after going over a large waterfall. Luckily, the girl finds him on the river bank and is able to revive him. They become friends after that, and as he travels with her for the next few days, he sings a 19th-century drinking song "Little Brown Jug". The child in return sings a song in her own language. They later part ways near an area that she indicates as her homeland, which she is unwilling to leave.
His surviving pursuers continue tracking him. The guide finally reaches the colonial fort from which the safari had originally set out. The lead pursuer, now running closely behind him, is shot dead by rifle fire from the fort's soldiers, just a second before the warrior can land a fatal blow. When the guide finally reaches the safety of the fort, amidst the movements of the colonial troops, he turns and gives a saluting nod to the leader of his pursuers, who returns it, acknowledging the guide's final victory.