EPILOGUE.
“AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE.”
Job.
The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?
—Because one did survive the wreck.
It so chanced, that after the Parsee's disappearance, I was
he whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman,
when that bowsman assumed the vacant post; the same,
who, when on the last day the three men were tossed from out
the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So, floating on the
margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the
half-spent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but
slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it,
it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then,
and ever contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the
axis of that slowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did
revolve. Till, gaining that vital centre, the black bubble
upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning
spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force,
the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and
floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one
whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main.
The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on
their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks.
On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up
at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her
retracing search after her missing children, only found another
orphan.
