the story centres on an immense golden bell named the mother of voices, which may or may not exist. moorish king aly mansuh (sidney poitier) is convinced that it does. having collected all the legendary material about it that he can, he plans to mount an expedition to search for it. when a shipwrecked norseman, rolfe (richard widmark), repeats the story of the bell in the marketplace, and hints that he knows its location, he is seized by mansuh's men and brought in for questioning. rolfe insists that he does not know more than the legend itself and that the bell is most likely only a myth. he manages to escape by jumping through a window before the questioning continues under torture.