Moby Dick

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though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with
reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it
but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp
alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes
roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no
refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more
and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry.
'Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!' he groans, 'straight upwards, so it
burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!'

"Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still
reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the
Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as
one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish,
praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid
the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the
man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's naught