The Try-Works — Moby-Dick

American whaling ships carry a strange feature called the try-works. It is a brick furnace built right on the deck between the masts, like a kiln moved from land onto a wooden ship. Inside are two huge pots where blubber is boiled into oil. When the pots are not in use, sailors polish them until they shine like silver bowls. Some even crawl inside to nap during night watches.

Stubb starts the try-works for the first time on this voyage at nine at night. Wood gets the fire going, but after that the whale feeds its own flames. Leftover blubber scraps called fritters burn like fuel. The smoke is awful. Ishmael says it smells like judgment day and hell. By midnight the whale carcass is gone and the ship sails on in darkness. But fire lights the rigging like Greek fire on a warship. The harpooneers pitch blubber into the scalding pots. The whole Pequod looks like a burning corpse ship rushing through the night, as if it were the living image of Captain Ahab's obsessed soul.

Ishmael stands at the helm for hours in that red glow. He grows sleepy and briefly falls asleep while still standing. When he wakes, something is terribly wrong. He cannot see the compass. He feels as if the ship is rushing backward away from every safe harbor. He has turned around without knowing it and is facing the stern instead of the bow. He spins back just in time to keep the ship from flying into the wind and capsizing. He warns never to stare into fire while steering, never to dream at the helm, and never to turn your back on the compass.