[1] Against the background of the Mahdist War, young Feversham disgraces himself by quitting the army, which others perceive as cowardice, symbolized by the four white feathers they give him.

[2] British officer Harry Feversham resigns from his commission in the Royal North Surrey Regiment just before Lord Wolseley's 1882 expedition to Egypt to suppress the rising of Colonel Ahmed Orabi.

He travels on his own to Egypt and Sudan, where in 1882 Muhammad Ahmed proclaimed himself the Mahdi (Guided One) and raised a holy war.

On 26 January 1885, his Dervish forces captured Khartoum and killed its British governor, General Charles George Gordon.

Later, disguised as a mad Greek musician, Harry gets imprisoned in Omdurman, where he rescues Captain Trench, who had been captured on a reconnaissance mission.

[3] In the 1929 silent version, a square of Highlanders is broken, but saved by Feversham and the Egyptian garrison of a besieged fort.

The Muslims called Dervishes or The Mahdi are the same,[clarification needed] as are the geographic settings of Britain, Egypt and the Sudan.