In the autumn of 1886, two years after the fall of Khartoum and the death of General Gordon, a messenger brings news from deepest Africa that electrifies England - not all of the Sudan is lost. A province commanded by Gordon's last lieutenant, the Emin Pasha, still holds out against the Mahdi and the infidel hordes. Britain mounts a mighty expedition to relieve the gallant Pasha in his beleaguered outpost on the shores of Lake Albert, led by the one man with courage and experience enough to succeed: Henry Morton Stanley. He sets out across 5,000 miles of the Congo with 1,000 men, through the forbidden Ituri forest and encountering storms, savage slavers, fever, starvation and cannibals - to make one more mark in the history books.