392 
MOBY DICK; OR 
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 illumining it. Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom, now 
and then made ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost was the im- 
pression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much 
hound 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, some- 
how, 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 hack 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; ac- 
cept 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 mom 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. The sun hides not 
the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two-thirds 
of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy 
than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true — not true, or un- 
developed. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man 
of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is 
the fine-hammered steel of woe. “All is vanity.” All. This wilful 
world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet. But he 
who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards, 
and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, 
Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care- 
