The Boxcar Children are spending the summer out west on Mystery Ranch where they must help their friend, Mike, prove he is innocent of starting a fire.
While visiting the seaport town of Ragged Cove, Massachusetts, the Alden children find the ship's log of the Flying Cloud, shipwrecked in 1869, supposedly during a mutiny.
Relates the exploits of the four Alden children as they locate a missing man. The Boxcar children are determined to solve the mystery that surrounds an old yellow house on their grandfather's property. Strange things have happened in that house where long ago a man disappeared.