Margaret MacNiel, a girl living in a Cape Breton coal mining town, finds her life changing when she meets Neil Currie, a cheerful bagpipe-playing dishwasher. Unfortunately, neither of them are able to escape the industry around them.
In WWI East Africa, a gin-swilling Canadian riverboat captain is persuaded by a strait-laced English missionary to undertake a trip up a treacherous river and use his boat to attack a German gunship.