spouting whale, or school of tumbling sea-hogs--_if Paris were dumber
than the eternal ice_--what then, I asked myself, should I do?

* * * * *

I could have made short work, and landed at Shetland, for I found myself
as far westward as longitude 11° 23' W.: but I would not: I was so
afraid. The shrinking within me to face that vague suspicion which I
had, turned me first to a foreign land.

I made for Norway, and on the first night of this definite intention, at
about nine o'clock, the weather being gusty, the sky lowering, the air
sombrous, and the sea hard-looking, dark, and ridged, I was steaming
along at a good rate, holding the wheel, my poor port and starboard
lights still burning there, when, without the least notice, I received
the roughest physical shock of my life, being shot bodily right over
the wheel, thence, as from a cannon, twenty feet to the cabin-door,
through it head-foremost down the companion-way, and still beyond some
six yards along the passage. I had crashed into some dark and dead ship,
probably of large size, though I never saw her, nor any sign of her; and
all that night, and the next day till four in the afternoon, the
_Boreal_ went driving alone over the sea, whither she would: for I lay
unconscious. When I woke, I found that I had received really very small
injuries, considering: but I sat there on the floor a long time in a
sulky, morose, disgusted, and bitter mood; and when I rose, pettishly
stopped the ship's engines, seeing my twelve dead all huddled and
disfigured. Now I was afraid to steam by night, and even in the daytime
I would not go on for three days: for I was childishly angry with I know
not what, and inclined to quarrel with Those whom I could not see.