So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long
hours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea.
Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better
saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others.
The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me, capering half
in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindred visions
in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that unaccountable
drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight helm.
But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since inexplicable)
thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep,
I was horribly conscious of something fatally wrong.
The jaw-bone tiller smote my side, which leaned against it; in my
ears was the low hum of sails, just beginning to shake in the wind;
I thought my eyes were open; I 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.
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