It was the idea of having to give up, before he had begun, and when he was so close, so very close. Twenty, fifty, not more than a hundred miles ahead of him lay the frontier of the empire of Monomatapa. Behind him, one hundred miles to the north was the dirty little village of Tete, and the wide river which was the beginning of the long ignoble road back to England, back to obscurity, back to a commission in the thirdrate regiment, back to conformity and the wearying discipline of the cantonments of the Indian army.
Only now that he wes doomed to return to that life did he realize how deeply he hated and resented it, just how much the desire to escape it had brought him here to this wild untouched land. Like a long-term prisoner who has tasted one day of sweet freedom, so the prospect of return to his cage was that much more painful, now.
-- Wilbur Smith, The Falcon Flies.
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