This was mainly due to the insane yet solid decision of that evening, though partly also to an entire change in the weather and the sky since he entered the little tavern some two hours before.

Every trace of the passionate plumage of the cloudy sunset had been swept away, and a naked moon stood in a naked sky.

The moon was so strong and full that (by a paradox often to be noticed) it seemed like a weaker sun.

It gave, not the sense of bright moonshine, but rather of a dead daylight.
Over the whole landscape lay a luminous and unnatural discoloration, as of that disastrous twilight which Milton spoke of as shed by the sun in eclipse; so that Syme fell easily into his first thought, that he was actually on some other and emptier planet, which circled round some sadder star.

But the more he felt this glittering desolation in the moonlit land, the more his own chivalric folly glowed in the night like a great fire.