For what seemed ages piled on ages,
I lay there, frozen with the most awful fears, not daring
to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking that if I could but
stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be broken.
I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me;
but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all,
and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself
in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this
very hour, I often puzzle myself with it.
Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at
feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar,
in their strangeness, to those which I experienced on waking
up and seeing Queequeg's pagan arm thrown round me.
But at length all the past night's events soberly recurred,
one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to
the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm--
unlock his bridegroom clasp--yet, sleeping as he was, he still
hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain.
I now strove to rouse him--"Queequeg!"--but his only answer
was a snore. I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it
were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a slight scratch.
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