Late nineteenth century Britain gave few breaks for those born poor and of low social standing. So it was for Fynn Armstrong the youngest of six children born to croft farmers in the Scottish town of Perth on the River Tay. He elects to change his dismal life options and visits the local recruitment centre for the Black Watch Highland Regiment and signs up for duty in the Second Anglo Boer War. It could result in his death, or it could be his ticket to a life of opportunity and adventure in Africa. In the next five years Fynn Armstrong experiences the loneliness and danger of being a sniper in the Drakensberg Mountains, a hunter on a large cattle ranch in the Tuli Block of Bechuanaland, and facing-off against a powerful Ndebele chief in the Matopos Hills of Rhodesia. A rite of passage.