The Magic Labyrinth
“Unable to sleep, he roamed here and there with no place to go in mind—except that of getting away from himself.
“Damn me! Always trying to outrun my own self! If I had the wits of a cow, I’d stay and wrestle with him. But he can outrun, outwrestle me, the Jacob to my angel. Yet…I am Jacob also. I have a broken cog, not a broken thigh, I am an automaton Jacob, a mechanical angel, a robot devil. The ladder to heaven still leans against its window, but I can’t find it again.
“Destiny is happenchance. No, not that. I make my own. Not I, though. That thing which drives me, the devil that rides me. It waits grinning in the dark corner, and when I’ve reached my hand out to grab the prize, it leaps out and snatches it away from me.
“My ungovernable temper. The thing that cheats me and laughs and gibbers and runs away to hide and to emerge another day.
“Ah, Richard Francis Burton, Ruffian Dick, Nigger Dick, as they used to call me in India.
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