midnight
As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures , their tales of terror told in words of mirth ; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them , like the flames from the furnace ; as to and fro , in their front , the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers ; as the wind howled on , and the sea leaped , and the ship groaned and dived , and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night , and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth , and viciously spat round her on all sides ; then the rushing Pequod , freighted with savages , and laden with fire , and burning a corpse , and plunging into that blackness of darkness , seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander 's soul . 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 -LRB- and ever since inexplicable -RRB- 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 .