Saul Barnard grew up in a family of woodcutters. The woodcutters are scared of the elephants in the forest, but there's one elephant that never seems to threaten Saul. Tired of being exploited by wood buyers, Saul takes a stand and his father chases him away. He goes to work on the wood buyer MacDonald's wood yard, where he gets to know MacDonald's daughter, Kate, and falls in love with her. After a few years he leaves MacDonald and joins the first prospectors in the forest, searching for gold. Millwood becomes a small town with hotels and bars and houses. Kate appears again.

Inspector Rizzo in Napoli gets a message from a policeman from South Africa who wants to meet him. Immediately before this meeting the South African policeman is killed. Dying he shows Rizzo a picture of his young son Bodo. Rizzo travels to Johannesburg to find out what the policeman was working on and to find Bodo.

A medical examiner investigating a series of prostitute murders discovers that the culprit is an ancient tribal witch doctor come back to life.