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!
Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream
with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass;
accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the
artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly.
To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright;
those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn
will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious,
golden, glad sun, the only true lamp--all others but liars!
Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp,
nor Rome's accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the
millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon.
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