Moby Dick

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was half conscious of putting my fingers to the lids and mechanically
stretching them still further apart. But, spite of all this, I could see
no compass before me to steer by; though it seemed but a minute since I
had been watching the card, by the steady binnacle lamp illuminating it.
Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom, now and then made ghastly by
flashes of redness. Uppermost was the impression, that whatever swift,
rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as
rushing from all havens astern. A stark, bewildered feeling, as of
death, came over me. Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with
the crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted way,
inverted. My God! what is the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief
sleep I had turned myself about, and was fronting the ship's stern, with
my back to her prow and the compass. In an instant I faced back, just
in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into the wind, and very
probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful the relief from this
unnatural hallucination of the night, and the fatal contingency of being
brought by the lee!