In the North African desert, during the closing years of the nineteenth century, a warrior chieftain appeared from out of the sands themselves, claiming to be the incarnation of the Prophet. He called himself the Mahdi, and he pledged to sweep the Infidel English colonizers of the Sudan and their Egyptian allies from the land, to scourge the land by fire, blood and steel until not a single interloper was left among the living. At...