In the Sargasso Sea by Thomas A. Janvier

On shore, in a forest, I would not in the least have minded finding myself in a fix of this sort -- though my getting into it would have been unlikely -- because getting out of it would have been the easiest thing in the world. I know a good deal of wood-craft, and always can steer a course steadily by having the points of the compass fixed for me by the size and the trend of the branches, and by the bark growing thin or thick or by the moss or the lack of moss on the tree-trunks, and by the other such simple forest signs which are the outcome of the affection that there is on the part of things growing for the sun.

But what made my breath come hard and my heart take to pumping -- as I stood looking up the tall side of the _City of Boston_, being certain that I never had come down it and so must be off my course entirely -- was my conviction that in this forest of the ocean, if I may call it so, there were no signs which would help me to find my way. All around me was the same wild hopeless confusion of broken wrecks jammed tight together, or only a little separated by narrow spaces thick-grown with weed; and everywhere overhanging it heavily, growing denser the deeper that I got into the tangle, was the haze that made it more confusing still. And under the haze -- and because of it, I suppose -- was a soft languorish warmth that seemed to steal my strength away and a good deal of my courage too.