Being the story of the Morgans, a 19th-century Massachusetts whaling family, their tightly-knit Quaker community, and the dangerous adventures of an unwilling stowaway aboard one of the elder Morgan's harvest vessels.

The Great Gamble is a 1919 movie serial.

Montana cattleman Austin Brandt is jilted by Rosemary, who elopes with stranger Royce Greer, but he is consoled by his twenty-year-old niece Joan. Rosemary later returns to Custer City to run a dance hall with her husband, who mistreats her.

"Wild Cat" Betsey Dawley, whose father, "Handsome Harry," was disowned by the proud Dawley family of Greenburgh, Kentucky, meets and thoroughly charms her snobbish cousin Virginia's fiancé, John Davidson, at a picnic. At the start of the Civil War, John becomes a Union officer, while Betsey and her father staunchly defend the South. When Confederate Colonel Morgan, the leader of the intrepid band known as "Morgan's Men," commissions a young horseman to deliver an important message to the Dawley mansion, the rider is shot and Betsey takes his place, breaking through the lines and successfully accomplishing the mission.

In attempting to develop a chemical which would make a person super-intelligent, Dr. Montrose fails and the subjects of his experiments metamorphose into hideous monsters who band together and prey on humans. With the police stymied, a young detective attempts to track down the leader of the group of killers, known only to have a small crimson stain in one eye.

In the Canadian province of Acadia, young Evangeline is betrothed to Gabriel. But before their wedding can take place, the British imprison the men and send them into exile with their lands forfeit to the Crown Evangeline follows the exiled men in hopes of finding her beloved, but even after he and the other Acadians are released in Louisiana, she cannot find him, always arriving at some locale just after he has departed. But she dedicates her life to searching the continent for the man she loves.

A woman, with the aid of her police officer sweetheart, endeavors to uncover the prostitution ring that has kidnapped her sister, and the philanthropist who secretly runs it.