<p>The youthful Allan Ouatermain is bound for strange adventures, in the company of the ill-fated Pieter Retief and the Boer Commission, on an embassy to the Zulu despot, Dingaan. Yet he is bound, too, for one of the deepest romances of his life — for in Marie he tells of his courtship and marriage to his first wife, Marie Marais.</p>