Pickpockets and Zulus

A young Victorian pickpocket finds himself rescued from the police but enlisted in the army. His life gradually changes, he learns new skills, makes new friends and eventually he travels with the regiment to South Africa where his real soldiering begins. In Cape Town he is briefly reunited with his cousin but as he is a private soldier and she is now married to an officer they cannot communicate and in the following years they can meet only briefly as the army engages in colonial conflicts. Many miles away, in a Zulu village, a boy of similar age grows up in a very different society, living with his brothers and sisters but a burning ambition to serve his King draws him away to join the Zulu army. Events unfold and the two young men are thrown into conflict, experiencing hardship and violence until one fateful day they finally meet on the African plains.